On Thursday evening, Nitish Parashar, 28, stood near a large vessel full of water he had kept on the terrace of his home and prayed to the setting sun. "It's the penultimate day of the four-day Chhath festival. The Yamuna is so polluted, you cannot even go there," says the marketing executive in South Delhi's Lado Sarai.
Chhath is also about cleanliness and caring for rivers ponds, lakes and canals where the prayers are offered. But with rapid urbanisation and rising pollution, families are forced to complete the rituals at artificial water bodies. And the festival is no more limited to Bihar, Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh. About 40 lakh people from this region called Poorvanchal live in Delhi alone.
Similar stories are heard from other cities as well. Nalin Pandey and his family also offered the arghya on their building premises in Mumbai's Nerul. For the last two years, they have been avoiding a nearby lake due to filth and overcrowding. "On our premises, there is a water fountain, placed in a way that both setting and rising suns can be seen from there," says Pandey, head of a shipping company.
Chhath begins from the sixth day of Diwali. The first day is Nahai-Khai, when devotees prepare traditional food after bathing. The second day is called Kharna, when a dawn-to-dusk fast is observed. On the third day, devotees stand in water and offer arghya to the setting sun.
On the final day, devotees offer arghya to the rising sun.
"Chhath is about rigour. Devotees strive to attain mental and physical purity. How can we perform puja near the Yamuna which is nothing but a sewage canal?," asks Renu, 23, a Delhi student. Chhath, this year, is being celebrated from October 24-27.
"In Patna itself, rush, risks and filth along the banks of the Ganga have forced a number of devotees to turn to community ponds or makeshift water bodies on rooftops to perform the rituals," says Shiv Kumar of the city's Lohanipur area.
Sunita Gupta, a school teacher in Kolkata, has made an arrangement at her terrace. "We have a tub which is filled up with water for Chhath. We bring Ganga water, pour it in the tub and perform the rituals." Lucknow's Manoj Mishra also has a small pond built on the terrace of his house for Chhath.
Chhath in Kashmir has its own side. Inside a small pond at the CRPF Recruit Training Centre (RTC), Sujata Tiwari is waiting for the sun to start setting. Braving autumn cold, Sujata of Eastern UP performs the rituals with precision as her husband watches on. The festival is mostly confined to a few highly secured camps of security forces where men from Bihar and Eastern UP are living with their families.
Irrespective of the venue, thekua — a delicacy made of finely-ground flour, ghee and sugar — remains the main prasad!
(With inputs from Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Patna, Lucknow and Srinagar)
