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Nation celebrates Dussehra, Durga Puja

     New Delhi/Kolkata: The festival of Dussehra was celebrated with high enthusiasm throughout the country on Wednesday, while the nine-day long 'Durga Puja' also came to end with immersion (which symbolically ends the festivities) of huge idols of Goddess Durga across the nation. In New Delhi, Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh while participating in the Dussehra celebrations at Subhash Nagar ground said the nation was facing a grave situation in Jammu and Kashmir due to the devastating October-8 earthquake and appealed to all citizens to contribute with ''open hands'' for relief and rehabilitation operations there. "We are with the people of the state in this hour of grief. ''Several children have died and many women have become widows because of the quake. We all are with them in these trying times,'' Dr Singh said.

     Referring to the basic reason for celebrating Dussehra, the Prime Minister said: ''We must continue doing our duty, come what may, as ultimately truth comes out victorious. Dusshera is symbolic of the victory of goodness over evil''. The PM, along with UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Lt Governor B L Joshi and Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, also released pigeons, which is considered as "symbols of peace" and coloured baloons to mark the occasion. In eastern India, it was the women's day out at community Puja Pandals across as the time for bidding farewell to Goddess Durga approached. Married ladies, including mothers, wives and daughters joined together to bid adieu to the Goddess, adorning her with vermilion and feeding her sweets. They applied vermilion on each other, praying for the well being of their husbands, asking the Goddess for her blessings, seeking prosperity, health and wealth for their better halves.

      In Delhi, hundreds of devotees marched in processions carrying idols of Goddess Durga to river Yamuna. Celebrated as Durga Puja in the east and Navratra in the north, the nine-day festival is amongst the biggest in the country as cities, towns and villages all come alive with celebrations during which thousands of glittering tents are put up as makeshift temples and dances and revelry are held every night. Goddess Durga is worshipped during the nine-day "Navratri" festival, but public display of idols in Pandals or makeshift temples is held for four days and the idols are immersed in the sea, rivers and lakes on the last day. Durga is depicted as a powerful goddess, riding a raging lion, holding aloft ten weapons of war in her ten hands. Her trident is depicted plunging into the side of a monstrous buffalo, out of whose body emerges a demon symbolising evil. It is said that the goddess makes her annual visit to the world and the festivities are meant to welcome her.