The Southernmost Durga Puja on the planet: A mix of craziness and enthusiasm It’s a wish that was first expressed at our usual gathering on a friday night over a sumptuous meal of bhaat and kosha mangsho ( and a pint of beer !). ‘Can we have our own Durga pujo?’ suddenly became the topic of discussion. Amusing thought, you would say, however, this was never an option in Dunedin, a city located on the southern part of the south island of New Zealand with a handful of Bengalis. Christchurch was our preferred destination for this year’s puja, but the fact that they are doing it a week before the actual puja somehow took the interest away and “Can we have our own pujo’ started to get serious with every passing day. The’ southernmost Durga Puja’ on the planet! The biggest issue was the idol (with our mere student budget and the distance to get one). One of us, being a little crazy and weird, wanted to give it a crack and make an idol out of clay( a small one!). A few of us with gusto started buying stuffs as well as designing a website (a free one without a domain as of now J ) . The craziness turned into meetings after meetings and a month before pujo we knew that this was actually happening! Big deal. There are around 40 bongs (including our Bangladeshi brothers) in Dunedin who are happy to join us on the 30th September and the 1st October to celebrate the event. Being in a foreign country doesn’t allow us to do it outside weekends. Coming back to the budget, it was difficult to rent a venue. However, one of the senior lecturers at the University of Otago was happy to provide his massive garage space to us, which was of massive benefit. This pujo, which is an effort of mostly research students , research fellows and a few senior lecturers at the University of Otago , is something which had never even passed our minds a couple of months back, is close to reality now. We have tried to compress the 4 day event into a 2 day event, with a purohit aiding us on Skype from Kolkata! Furthermore, there’s Bengali dinner and lunch-from luchi cholar dal to khichuri to kosha patha on both the days! As of now, with just more than a week left, people are trying their best to gather after work in the cold evenings to make this happen.If not anything, at least this allows us to feel the festive flavour even at a distance of ~11,203 KM away from the subcontinent. The initiators:- Shyamal Das, Akash Deep Chakraborty, Ranjan Roy, Nilanjan Ghosh