The first Durga Puja away from home feels strange.
Suggested hero image: a simple diya foreground with the Durga Puja atmosphere softly visible behind it.
You are working. Your calendar says Friday. Your mother is sending photographs from the neighbourhood pandal. The family WhatsApp group has suddenly become very active.
Someone sends a video of dhaak. Someone else sends the bhog menu. And for five minutes, your office desk in Hinjawadi feels very far from home.
Thousands of people have probably experienced some version of this after moving to Pune. A new city gives us careers, friendships, apartments and opportunities. But festivals have a way of reminding us about the things we left behind.
That is one reason Oitijhyo Sarbojonin is being created in Hinjawadi. Not because Pune needs another enormous Durga Puja. Because sometimes a neighbourhood needs a place that feels like its own.
That thought is explored more deeply in One More Durga Puja in Hinjewadi? Yes. Here Is Why.
Kolkata cannot be recreated. And that is okay.
There will always be something incomparable about Durga Puja in Kolkata.
The streets. The lights. The queues. The smell of food from somewhere you cannot identify. That first beat of dhaak. Friends disappearing for an entire night of pandal hopping. And the strange sadness that begins even before Dashami arrives.
We cannot transport Kolkata to Hinjawadi. We should not try.
Instead, we can build something smaller and more personal. A place where people recognise each other. A Puja where your child can perform. Where you can come for anjali in the morning and return for the evening programme. Where the person serving bhog might live three buildings away.
Where you stop being part of a crowd and start becoming part of a community.
That is a Para Pujo.
Not simply an event you attend, but a celebration that gradually begins to feel like it belongs to you.
Hinjawadi is ready for that feeling.
Hinjawadi has grown around offices, technology parks, apartments, new roads and new neighbourhoods. People arrive here from Kolkata, Durgapur, Siliguri, Asansol, Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and dozens of other places.
They build careers here. Then homes. Then families. And gradually something else becomes important: belonging.
That is also the central idea behind Why Oitijhyo, Why Hinjewadi, Why Now?
Oitijhyo's first Sharodiya Durgotsav is an attempt to create a little more of that belonging.
Come alone. You probably won't remain alone for long.
New to Pune? Come.
Your family is outside India this year? Come.
Your friends have other plans? Come anyway.
One of the nicest things about a neighbourhood Durga Puja is that introductions happen naturally. Someone asks where you are from. Someone offers you prasad. Someone recognises your company ID card. Someone discovers you live in the next society.
And before long, somebody has added you to another WhatsApp group. Possibly several.
That is how communities are built. Not through grand declarations, but through repeated small encounters.
Bring your children
For children growing up outside Bengal, festivals have another role. They turn culture from something their parents describe into something they can experience.
They hear dhaak instead of watching it on a screen. They see anjali. They watch an Alpona being created. They participate in cultural programmes. They eat bhog with other children.
They learn that Durga Puja is not simply a holiday that appears on their parents' calendar. It is something they belong to.
That is how oitijhyo, or heritage, survives. Not by keeping it behind glass, but by allowing another generation to make its own memories.
A Celebration of Shakti
Oitijhyo's first Puja also carries a message that belongs very naturally to Durga Puja: women's empowerment.
The women helping build this association are not being placed on the side of the organisation. They are helping lead it.
Read A Puja Led by Women, At Last for the story behind that leadership.
The 51 Nari Shakti initiative also creates space for women from the community whose everyday journeys deserve to be heard.
Because worshipping Shakti should also make us notice the Shakti living beside us.
And if you are not Bengali?
Come anyway.
Durga Puja has always had a remarkable ability to make visitors feel welcome. You do not need to understand every mantra to appreciate anjali. You do not need to speak Bengali to enjoy a cultural evening. And you definitely do not need to speak Bengali to understand a plate of good bhog.
Oitijhyo is Sarbojonin. Everyone is welcome.
Six days. Perhaps the beginning of something much longer.
Oitijhyo's first Sharodiya Durgotsav will take place from 16 to 21 October 2026 in Hinjawadi Phase 2.
Plan your visit with the complete Oitijhyo Durga Puja schedule.
For the venue and directions, use the Contact & Venue page.
Maybe you will visit for an hour. Maybe your children will insist on returning the next day. Maybe you will volunteer next year. Maybe one of the strangers you meet there will become a close friend.
That is impossible to advertise. It has to happen.
So if this is your First Durga Puja away from Kolkata, there is no need to spend the festival only scrolling through photographs from home.
There is a new para pujo being built in Hinjawadi. And there is room for you in it.
Come home for Pujo.
Even if home is now Hinjawadi.