Durga Puja is the grandest festival of Bengal, Assam, Odisha and the wider eastern region, the autumn worship of the goddess Durga as slayer of the buffalo demon Mahishasura, held over the last days of Navaratri and climaxing at Vijayadashami. Its theology rests on the Devi Mahatmya, which presents Durga as the supreme power who, made from the combined energies of the gods, accomplishes the victory they could not; her image shows her ten-armed, astride her lion, driving her trident into the demon, flanked by her children Lakshmi, Saraswati, Ganesha and Kartikeya.
The festival's defining form is the pandal, an elaborate temporary pavilion housing a specially made clay image of the Goddess, around which whole neighbourhoods organise; in a great city hundreds of pandals compete in artistry, and the days become a vast public celebration of processions, feasting, new clothes, all-night crowds and community. The Goddess is understood to arrive as a daughter returning to her natal home for the days of the festival, giving it a strongly familial and emotional tone; on the final day her images are carried in procession and immersed in the river, sending her back to her husband Shiva. UNESCO inscribed Durga Puja in Kolkata on its Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2021, recognising its scale as a public art and community festival.