For nearly 250 years, the Roychowdhury family’s ancestral Durga Puja remained only a memory. Memory of a time when their thakur dalan in Gurbari, Hooghly, echoed with the sound of conch shells, ululation and dhaak. But last year, industrialist and educationist Satyam Roychowdhury revived the centuries-old tradition at his Salt Lake residence, bringing a lost chapter of family history back to life.
Satyam Roychowdhury with his family members at Durgabari
Held at GD-279, Sector 3, Mou-er Durgabari, it is now in its second year of celebrations. But what is the story behind the renewed barir pujo?
The story goes back three centuries to Gurbari village in Hooghly district, where the Roychowdhury family lived amid mango orchards, ponds and expansive homesteads. The family had two houses, known as Barobari and Chhotobari, associated with the worship of Radha Gobinda Jiu and Lakshminarayan Jiu.
The three-century old ancestral home of the Roychowdhurys at Gurbari
Satyam Roychowdhury shared that the Durga Puja held at the family’s ancestral thakur dalan was once a major occasion in the village.
“Relatives and guests arrived from outside and stayed for several days, while the festivities brought together devotion, elaborate rituals and the warmth of traditional Bengali hospitality,” he said.
Gurbari
The end of the Puja, however, was linked to another chapter of the family’s history.
According to family lore, Ramnarayan Roychowdhury, an ancestor, dreamt that a sacred stone lay neglected near Jagannath Ghat on the banks of the Ganga in Kolkata. He retrieved the stone and brought it home, where artisans from Benaras were commissioned to carve the image of Lord Krishna. An Ashtadhatu idol of Radharani was subsequently created, and the worship of Radha Gobinda Jiu became an integral part of the household’s spiritual life.
Another branch of the family, under Indranarayan Roychowdhury, established the idol of Lakshminarayan Jiu. With the establishment of Radha Gobinda Jiu, the family discontinued its Durga Puja nearly 250 years ago, following the religious customs observed at the time.
Remnants of the Durga Dalan at Gurbari
The tradition remained dormant across generations until Roychowdhury decided to bring it back, guided, he says, by a divine dream. The revival also became a way of honouring his late wife Mou Roychowdhury, lending the annual celebration a personal meaning alongside its historical significance.
“Carrying the tradition of centuries of Puja in our hearts, the festival of Durga Puja is taking place again this year at Salt Lake’s Durga Bari,” Roychowdhury said.
For him, the return of the Puja represents a connection between the family’s past and present, allowing a tradition that once belonged to an ancestral village to find a new home in Kolkata.
Satyam Roychowdhury at the Panchami celebrations at Mou-er Durgabari
“It is like a bridge connecting the present to the past. It is the meeting point of ancestral traditions and culture,” he said.
Roychowdhury describes the revival as an inheritance of faith and memory. “I feel this Durga Puja is not merely a festival, but a rebirth of our family’s heritage, a legacy of devotion, and a grand epic of memories,” he said.
Haimanti Shukla performing at Durgabari on Panchami
This year, the celebrations were inaugurated on Panchami, October 15, with a performance by singer Haimanti Shukla. Other cultural programmes are lined up, featuring renowned artistes with faculty members of Sister Nivedita University over the next few days.