The charisma of goddess Durga’s nature and the contradiction embedded in her representation depicts
her as a ferocious warrior and a benevolent mother, as an aggressive slayer and an obedient wife, as a
beginning and an end, as a creator and a destroyer. All the components of Durga namely furious warrior,
protective mother, Annapurna, & Shakti combined to form her identity. These are only a few
manifestations a goddess can take to fulfill the desires of her devotees. This identity today has gained
some new alarming dimensions according to the specific emerging needs. An interesting identity or
more aptly, a novel manifestation of the goddess came up during the period of Covid in Bengal during
2020 Durga Puja celebration when one of the Durga Puja Pandal in Kolkata worshipped an idol of “a
woman migrant laborer with her three children” as a goddess in order to respect and
celebrate women- power who suffered during the Covid- 19 pandemic. I put forth the central aim of this
research, which is to navigate what all novel manifestations of goddess Durga were worshipped by the
devotees in sarbojanin (public) pandals in Kolkata and how women envisage the pratima and those
manifestations of Durga Ma (deity of goddess) and connect themselves to it in terms of the paradigm of
one’s memory, liminal phase and corporal identity.
