Editorial message
Not every journey in the vast ocean of human existence remains recorded. Individuals respond
to the call of life. Some reach out in a quest to know the unknown. Some to fulfil their wander-
lust. There could be plethora of reasons behind a life-path. Whatever be the reason though,
every journey has its own story. They connect lives, make the unknown known, create relation-
ships - in different scales, with effects ranging from personal to international ones. Journeys
that do not leave any recorded footprint for the successor generations to review, may have
their own impact in either a personal/local way or a pervasive way with butterfly effect. The
recorded journeys, on the other hand, give us a glimpse of the past along the linearity of
human history. In such journeys, during the golden era of Polish Renaissance in 16th century,
the Polish nobleman and statesman Pawel Palczowski of Palczowic (from the distinguished sen-
ior Silesian Polish nobility House of Saszowski family), Erzm Kretowski and the Polish merchant
Gaspar da Gama from Poznań, as well as Krzysztof Pawlowski (whose description of India in
Polish, recorded in a letter dated 1569, is considered to be the first of such kind) † – historically
made the first Polish contact with India.
Much water has flowed through the Ganges and the Vistula since then, and the linguo-cultural
exchange, and in more recent times- diplomatic, economic, even national defence ties
between India and Poland have mutually enriched each other.
When two nations decide to collaborate, it eventually facilitates many other journeys. The
mobility between the nations increases through plenty of different ways, for example,
academic-exchange programs, collaborations in sciences and arts, business investments,
corporate tie-ups, even personal curiosity of exploring an open world. The Poles and the Indi-
ans have thus been savouring the saffron-white-green and the white-red flavors respectively
for a while, creating a unique mandala of being. As heterogeneous India herself is home to
many very diverse cultures, religions, languages and ways of being, Indians who came to Po-
land brought their diversities alongwith. We, the Indian Bengalis, hail from the eastern state of
Bengal (capital: the city of joy, Kolkata) in India. As we speak the Indo-Aryan language Bengali,
we are often considered as an ethno-linguistic group ‡ of people. contemporary residential Ben-
galis in Poland. With the growing community, naturally came the proposal to celebrate the ma-
jor festival of the Indian Bengalis, Durgapuja.
The Hindu trinity consists of Brahma- the creator, Vishnu- the preserver and Shiva- the de-
stroyer. Mythologically, demon (Asura) Mahishasura worshipped Brahma with the wish to be-
come immortal, but Brahma only bestowed on him the boon of being indestructible by any
man. Armed with the boon, when Mahishasura wrecked havoc on the entire creation and cre-
ated utmost chaos, all the gods together poured in their energy to create the supremely pow-
erful Goddess Durga who ultimately killed Mahishasura and brought back order in the creation.
Durga is the Mother Goddess of the hindus.