Sindoor khela
On Dashami, married women smear vermillion as Ma departs.
On Vijaya Dashami, the last day, married women offer sindoor to the goddess before she is taken for immersion, touching it to her face and feet in farewell.
Then they smear the vermillion on one another, cheeks and foreheads bright with red, half in celebration and half in parting. It marks the goddess leaving for her own home.
Before the sindoor comes the boron, the formal farewell. Women approach the idol with a plate of sweets, betel leaf and paan, touching them to the goddess's mouth and feet, and gently rock the frame in the gesture of seeing a daughter off to her husband's home. Only then does the vermillion begin.
Sindoor khela has long belonged to married women, the vermillion in the parting of the hair being a mark of that status, offered to Ma as one wife seeing off another. In recent years many pandals have opened it to all women, widowed and unmarried alike, and even to men, reading the rite as a farewell that belongs to everyone who loves her.
The mood is bittersweet, laughter through wet eyes. When the smearing is done, faces bright red, the day closes with mishti mukh, a sweet pressed into every mouth, and Subho Bijoya said with an embrace. The immersion follows, and with it the promise carried in one line: aasche bochhor abar hobe, next year it will happen again.
