Patna : Festive fervour erupted on the streets of Patna – and other cities and towns of Bihar – as celebrations of the state’s most popular Chhath festival got underway on Friday.
Melodious tunes from folk and devotional songs filled the streets of Bihar’s capital and the drive to clean the roads, narrow lanes, river banks and ponds reached its final stage.
The annual four-day festival began with the age-old ritual of Nahai-Khai – preparing traditional food after elaborate bath – across thousands of villages and hundreds of towns spread all over Bihar.
Millions of devotees, mostly women, took a holy dip in rivers, ponds and other water bodies across the state, on the first day of the festival.
Thousands of women devotees have also been busy preparing the ritualistic meal of boiled rice and pumpkin in a hand-made earthen hearth after bath in the Ganga or the river nearby.
In Patna alone, hundreds of roadside vendors, mostly poor men and women, sold essential items like earthen pots utensils, daura, soop (winnows), and sindoor (vermillion) that go into the Chhath celebrations.
“The banks of the Ganga, Falgu, Punpun, Bagmati, Gandak and Kosi rivers as well as big and small water bodies were crowded as devotees prepared vegetarian food on earthen ‘chulhas’ (firewood stove),” a police officer said.–IANS
