KENDRAPARA: After a two-year Covid hiatus, residents of the seaside villages of Kendrapara celebrated the annual Kanya Sankranti by garlanding Goddess Manasa Devi with currency notes on floating rafts.This ritual is mostly followed by the Bengali community residing in the area which makes this unusual offering as a way of appeasing the Goddess, considered the deity of snakes, so as to protect them from the slithering reptiles found in the nearby forests.
Around 50,000 Bengali speaking people reside in coastal pockets of the district. Most immigrated from the erstwhile East Pakistan in 1947 and many also came from Bangladesh in the 1970s. The government settled them in the mangrove-covered seaside areas. “They have been worshipping Manasa Devi for a long time,” said Narayan Haldar, the former sarpanch of Kharinashi gram panchayat. They observe the festival by installing Goddess Manasa idol on makeshift rafts on the rivers and creeks.
Sarpanch of Ramnagar GP Bijaya Shuklya informed that this festival includes devotees worshipping the Devi by offering milk, bananas, sugar and currency notes.A priest of Ramnagar village recounted that earlier devotees used to immerse idols of the deity along with the currency notes but nowadays their donations are being used for temple development purpose.“It is an age-old belief that people offer money garlands to the Goddess on Kanya Sankranti in order to appease and seek her blessings. The wishes of anyone who offers money garlands to the deity on this particular day, will be fulfilled. We are poor but try to donate some money for the festival, to maintain the ritual,” said a Batighar local Manasi Mandal.