Saraswati puja celebrated amid traditional fervour

By: Saloni Vats

PATNA: People, especially students, decked up in traditional bright-yellow attires as Saraswati puja was celebrated across the city with traditional fervour on Sunday.


The city witnessed a riot of colour as people smeared each other with ‘abir’. Girls decked up in yellow saris and boys in their best ethnic wears came out to celebrate the puja with great enthusiasm. Several institutions, hospitals and hostels performed the puja by installing beautiful idols of goddess Saraswati and setting up pandals. Basant Panchami or Saraswati puja is celebrated on the fifth day of the Hindu month of Magh.

Students took special interest in celebrating the puja by mingling with their friends and organising several cultural programmes.

Vandana Bharti, owner of a private girls’ hostel in Buddha Colony, said around 200 inmates of her hostel started preparing for the puja three to four days back. “Chants of Ganesh and Saraswati vandana marked the beginning of puja at the pandal set up on the hostel campus,” Bharti added.

At Magadh Mahila College, the hostellers celebrated the festival by participating in different cultural programmes, such as classical dance and music. Aruna, a Maithili teacher at the college, said, “The idol is put up alternatively in one of the five hostels on the campus every year. This year, the puja was performed at the Welfare Hostel.”

Meanwhile, students, teachers and staff of Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) began their four-day Basant Panchami celebrations on Sunday. The first day was marked by puja in which around 1,500 students, teachers and staff participated. “A lunch will be organized for all the students and staff on Monday while the idol of the Goddess will be immersed on Tuesday. We will also organise a cultural programme as part of the celebrations on Wednesday,” a member of Junior Doctors’ Association of PMCH said.