Visit to Ghagorburi

Ghagorburi temple near Asansol-Raniganj is the temple I have found most spiritual. Actually, I have seen the human manifestation of the child deity with my own eyes. In 2015, when I had left the Lecturer job at rani Birla Girls' College and was appearing for some Govt exams, some voices inside me was telling to give something for the brothers and sisters who sit outside the temple. First time (in 2011) I went there I gave them a few 10 rupee notes, when the last one asked, I did not give him any because I was offended by his tone. It was my stupidity to expect a polished manner of asking money from an uneducated poor man. Within 10 km our car had a puncture. We were going to our masis house at Burdwan. My masis (mother's sister) youngest daughter made some mocking sound about Ghagorburi and within 1 week she fell at Howrah station and hurt her leg badly. Last Durga Puja, I was able to give few new sarees to the people sitting outside the temple. I believe my new job at OUP and my ability to give sarees are all due to the deity's blessings.

There are days when you are so worked for a long time that you end up being late. 6th May 2017 (Saturday) was such a date. I had prepared 6 cakes on the previous weekend, bought the materials (eggs, butter, sugar) the previous week, on my way back home from the office. My mother had prepared 2 kilos of chicken and my father bought 2 and a half kilos of mangoes, which was paid by me. On Friday (5th I had bought refreshments and aluminium foil for packing the cakes, from Uttarpara more and reached home at 9 pm, dead tired. maybe the exhaustion of Friday carried over to Saturday and that made me lethargic. I woke up at 6 am, did the packing of cakes a bit and started at 9 am. Most of the packing of chicken in the white plastic box (bought by my father before his Delhi trip to meet my brother) and cake in aluminium foil was done by my father.

The last Sunday I had cleaned the car after visiting kalighat on Saturday with dida. So did not have to use a single minute for car cleaning that day. Straight went to Mukherjee Petrol pump and filled the tank full with Rs 1490 of petrol. Checked tyres air pressure near belting bazar and within 50 minutes was cruising Durgapur expressway at 120 kph. I generally drive within 50-60 kph to save petrol.
This was to be my dida's first visit to Ghagorburi temple, and after the lazy start it did dawned on me to make haste. We stopped over at Lengcha Mohol, at Saktigarh and was elated to discover Amitabh Bachchan had food there, on his way to Bolpur, for Sujit sarkar's film.

We reached Ghagorburi at 1 pm, and I gave 1 mango, 1 packet of cake and 1 box of chicken curry to some beggars sitting in the April Sun at 1 pm. The others had gone home, or a shade they called home. Then barefoot (that was absolute torture in the heated ground) I sprinted to the temple and offered Puja. Then, I took out the other three bags from the car, walked for 10 minutes in that blazing heat, but finally found kids. They were extremely happy to receive from me. I was even happier. We then ate ice-cream and left for Bhedia via the Illambazar-Bolpur route. The scenic beauty of that road is awesome. We reached Bhedia at 4 pm. I carried the bags (there were too many) to the house. Then my mother helped Dida to unpack the luggage and distribute the Puri n other Prasads among few of the neighbours. Finally, we left for our Serampore residence at 7 pm, and reached at 1o pm. The journey was uneventful.