Alipurduar’s Lichutala has been hosting a Durga Puja for the past 75 years—but its heartbeat still throbs in Mymensingh, Bangladesh. The Chowdhury family’s century-old Puja, now entering its 115th year, is not just a religious celebration; it is a living heirloom, stitched with soil, scripture, sacrifice and stories that cross both time and borders.
The roots of this Puja lie in Kanthalbari village of Mymensingh, where the late Manmohan Chowdhury first began worshipping the goddess. But history intervened. Partition uprooted the family in 1950, compelling them to leave their ancestral home. What they carried along was no less sacred than memory itself: the ancient structure of the idol and sacred soil, bundled across borders into their new home at Alipurduar Junction. Even today, the family insists that the clay for crafting the idol must come from Bangladesh— an unbroken umbilical cord to their origins.
“Our Puja is being held from Bangladesh,” says senior family member Naveen Chowdhury with quiet pride, adding, “The specialty is that we follow the Matsya Purana, and even now our structure is the one inherited from our forefathers.”
This Puja once bore the stark edge of buffalo sacrifice. But when the family resettled in Bengal, the women raised their voices against the bloodshed. Then came a dream — a warning, as remembered by the family matriarch — that sacrifice was dangerous, displeasing. From that day, on the advice of the family’s Kulguru, blades were replaced with symbols. Today, pumpkins and rice take the place of goats and buffaloes, standing as silent tribute to a bygone custom.
If you think the story ends at rituals, think again. The Bhog of the Chowdhury Puja carries its own history. On Saptami, Ashtami and Nabami, the air is scented with Balya Bhog—cooked rice, sesame paste, poppy-seed delicacies, and an assortment of seasonal vegetables. In the 1960s, none other than then Chief Minister Siddharth Shankar Ray and his wife Maya sat shoulder-to-shoulder with the family, eating Bhog after offering Anjali. For the Chowdhurys, this memory has become a bookmark in their personal history of the Puja.
The Puja follows a rhythm older than the Partition itself. Saptami heralds Balya Bhog. Ashtami lights up with Sandhi Puja and Brahma Puja on the pond’s edge. Nabami sees the pond once more, with Sheetala Puja and fish-offerings caught by the family’s own hands. Vegetarian till Ashtami, non-vegetarian from Nabami—the shifts of taste map the shifts of ritual. And as Dashami arrives, the idol finds its home in water again, immersed in the very pond that has bathed generations of Chowdhurys.
But perhaps the greatest ritual here is reunion. Debashrita Chowdhury, part of the younger generation, says with sparkling candor, “We worship our mother with vegetarian food from Panchami to Ashtami. On Nabami, the joy is unmatched— we catch fish together from our own pond. Brothers, sisters, cousins all come home. This is our festival of family.”
Her cousin Arusha echoes: “Durga Puja in our house is not just worship. It is waiting, longing, returning. It is touching the utensils that crossed borders with us, cleaning them and remembering that they too carry the weight of our story.”
Two months before the festival, artisans begin shaping the idol, guided by the soil that travelled across the border. From Mahalaya until immersion, the family bathes in their pond daily—a ritualistic purification as old as their Puja itself.
In a world where displacement often erases roots, the Chowdhury family’s Puja stands stubbornly against the tide. It is not just about Durga—it is about soil carried in handfuls, traditions carried in dreams and families carried back home every autumn.
Here, devotion is not only inherited— it is performed. And in the shadow of the goddess, Alipurduar finds itself hosting one of the most offbeat yet deeply rooted Pujas of Bengal.
Also read: When Netaji held Durga Puja behind Presidency jail in Kolkata
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