Jamshedpur, Oct. 7: Dressed almost as a bride in a red Benarasi sari, a red veil and wearing a gold crown, four-year-old Bipasha Chatterjee sat nonplussed as she donned the role of the Kumari at Ramakrishna Mission, Bistupur, for the Kumari Puja today.

Apart from the Ramakrishna Mission, Kalibari Ashram in Beldih also celebrates the Kumari Puja — where a pre-pubescent girl is worshiped as the mother goddess. “An overwhelming number of people visit the ashram every year for the puja. Though it has no direct link, both rituals celebrate the feminine. It is like stating that every girl is a form of the goddess,” said Swami Manoranjan Maharaj, the mission head.

This year the monks chose a nursery student of Ramakrishna Mission School, Bistupur, to perform the role of the Kumari. Bipasha was remarkably patient as a group of swamis conducted a puja for more than an hour. The only time when the girl got flabbergasted was when crowds jostled to catch a glimpse of her and seek her blessings by touching her feet.

As her mother Meena Chatterjee explained it took some amount of coaxing to get her to be the Kumari. “This will be one of the most memorable moments in my life and in Bipasha’s. This is an honour for us. Frankly, it was difficult to convince her to sit at one place for more than an hour, but when I explained the ritual she agreed,” said Meena.

The Ramakrishna Mission has been organising the Kumari Puja ever since its inception. But, their puja timing differ from other city pujas.

The mission began to follow a new set of timing, from 1954 after the Vishu- ddh Siddhanta Math, constituted by scientist Meghnad Saha, calculated what the mission believes to be the correct set of timing.