Gamlin outside her ashram in Itanagar

No frills please, this is a feminist Puja at its best.

Durga is being single-handedly worshipped by a woman saint in a quaint little ashram in Itanagar for the past seven years with no embellishments but loads of defiance to a culture that treats the deity like an alien.

Not that 50-year-old Yasap Gamlin knew much about the goddess in her little village, some 600km from Itanagar.

The Daporijo headquarters of Upper Subansiri, where Gamlin spent the better part of her life, Donyi Polo is the religion that is followed and celebrated.

Something stirred within and Gamlin left her village for Itanagar to set up her own ashram where she could worship the goddess her own way.

She was assaulted, made to starve and ostracised, all because of the “alien goddess”.

“Right from setting up an ashram here in Itanagar after coming from my village in 1996, I had to struggle to keep the tradition of Durga Puja alive. Durga is considered the prototype of mother goddess Polo, whom we worship as an emblem of the Universal Woman in Donyi Poloism. I have managed to organise Durga Puja for seven years since 2001 despite adversities. I don’t know what will happen this year.”

“I have tried to raise funds for Puja this year too, but failed.”

Clad in a saffron gale, she even went around the neighbourhood with a begging bowl to collect funds.

“But I am determined to continue, even if it means worshipping the goddess only with an earthen pitcher,” said Gamlin.

Despite the paucity of funds, she managed to persuade priest Khagen Upadhay to come all the way from Assam to perform the rituals.

“We will perform the Puja at the ashram all the four days and khichdi will be distributed among the poor. Though small pujas like ours lose their way in the crowd of glamorous celebrations, we work as a glue to bind various communities,” said Yaro Nayam, a tribal woman in the locality.

Nayam said Gamlin was also trying to run an orphanage and a training centre for unemployed young girls.

“Gamlin is like a beacon, like mother Polo and Durga to us. She tried to set up her own orphanage and a training centre for young girls, but the government is yet to come to her aid,” she said.

Just a kilometre from Gamlin’s ashram, a pandal towers over the ministerial enclave, where the organising committee, with health minister C.C. Singpho as its chairman, is holding a grand festival.

The pandal, a replica of the Mysore palace, will cost approximately Rs 4 crore.

A hundredth of that budget would fund Gamlin’s impoverished little Puja for the next five years.

“Like my other tribal brethren, I am deeply rooted to my Donyi Polo, that has no tradition of performing Durga Puja. But like mother goddess Polo, she is also an embodiment of female power.

“My devotion to Polo inspired me to perform Durga Puja in my own little way. No matter what the adversities are, for a devotee Durga, the Puja days will certainly enliven my spirit,” Gamlin said.