Some houses lose a daughter. Some lose their future. And some mothers lose the person who made their entire world feel safe.
She left home as she always did.
She tied her hair, picked up her things, gave her mother a small smile, and said, “Ma, I’m going.”
Nobody knew that these ordinary words would become a memory her mother would spend the rest of her life holding on to.
Her name was Sriparna Poddar. She was only twenty-seven.
For the world, she was a nurse working at Tata Cancer Centre, a young woman who had completed her B.Sc. Nursing and chosen a profession in which every day brought her close to someone else’s pain.
But in the narrow lanes of Malir Bagan in Baidyabati, West Bengal, she was much more than that.
She was the only daughter of Shambhunath and Sapna Poddar.
And to her mother, she was everything.
I keep thinking about that morning. How many times do we watch someone leave home without imagining that we might never see them walk through the door again? We say goodbye casually because we believe there will always be another evening, another phone call, another chance to sit together.
We never think that an ordinary morning can become the last page of a family’s happiest memories.
The Daughter Who Carried Her Whole Family
Sriparna was not just earning a salary. She was carrying the responsibilities of her home.
Her mother had retired from nursing. Her father’s small business had its good days and difficult ones. Like many middle-class families, they had everyday expenses to manage: electricity bills, medicines, groceries, and the small repairs that an old house always seems to need.
Sriparna’s salary helped keep everything running.
She never made a big announcement about what she was doing for her parents. She simply did what needed to be done.
She went to work, came home tired, and continued looking after the people around her.
Even outside her family, she was known as someone who would help when another person was in trouble. If a neighbour’s child had a fever or someone needed help checking their blood pressure, she was ready to step in.
That is the kind of person I find myself thinking about.
Some people earn money to build their own dreams. Others work because their dreams are connected to the people waiting for them at home.
For Sriparna, perhaps happiness meant knowing that her parents were comfortable, that the household expenses were taken care of, and that her mother did not have to worry about everything alone.
Her parents had reached an age when they could begin thinking about resting a little more. Their daughter was there to support them. They could imagine the coming years with some sense of security.
They had a daughter who understood their worries without needing everything to be explained.
A daughter who would say, “Ma, tum araam karo, main dekh lungi.”
Ma, you rest. I’ll take care of it.
How much comfort can a mother find in those simple words?
Perhaps more than we understand until we are old enough to realise that our parents will not always be strong, and that the people who look after them are often carrying burdens we never see.
Sriparna was only twenty-seven, but she had already become the person her family depended on.
She was their daughter, their support, and their hope for tomorrow.
Maha Saptami: A Day That Should Have Been Full of Happiness
Durga Puja is a special time in Bengal.
The city changes its mood. Streets fill with people, pandals become places of gathering, and families step outside to celebrate. People wear new clothes, meet friends, take photographs, and move from one pandal to another late into the night.
There is something beautiful about seeing so many people come together for the same festival.
Maha Saptami should have been another day of celebration for Sriparna.
She left for her duty as usual. After work, she planned to spend some time with friends visiting the pandals.
It sounds like such an ordinary plan.
Finish work. Meet friends. Enjoy the festival. Return home.
Perhaps her mother expected her to come back and talk about the crowds. Perhaps she imagined asking her daughter whether she had eaten properly or whether she was tired after her shift.
These are the small conversations that happen in families every day.
We rarely remember them as special moments while they are happening. They become precious only when we realise how much we would give to experience them once again.
That day, the crowds around Chorbagan were heavy. Then the rain arrived suddenly.
People tried to move through the narrow exit. The crowd became difficult to control. Fear spread as people heard concerns about the structure and began pushing towards safety.
In the confusion, Sriparna did not make it out.
A day that had begun with a daughter leaving home for work ended in a tragedy her family could never have prepared for.
I find it difficult to imagine the moment when the news reached her parents.
How does a family understand something like that?
How does a mother accept that the daughter who left home in the morning, without any reason to believe it would be different from any other day, is not coming back?
There are moments when words cannot explain the pain. There is only silence, disbelief, and the terrible feeling that the world has changed while you are still trying to understand what happened.
“Meri Ghar Ki Durga Chali Gayi”
When the news reached Baidyabati, Sapna Poddar broke down.
She sat on the floor and kept repeating the same words:
“Meri ghar ki Durga chali gayi.”
My home’s Durga is gone.
I cannot stop thinking about that sentence.
During Durga Puja, people pray to Goddess Durga. They decorate pandals, offer flowers, light lamps, and celebrate the arrival of the goddess.
But for Sapna, Durga was not only an idol placed inside a pandal.
Durga was the daughter who left home every morning to work.
Durga was the young woman whose salary helped pay the household bills.
Durga was the person who worried about her father’s health and reminded her mother to rest.
Durga was the one who made her parents feel that, whatever difficulties came their way, they would not have to face everything alone.
That was her Durga.
A daughter who had grown into the family’s strongest support without making a show of her sacrifices.
A daughter who was building her own life while helping her parents live theirs with dignity.
And now, that daughter was gone.
I wonder what a mother sees when she looks at the door after losing her child.
Does she remember the last smile? The sound of footsteps? The voice saying, “Ma, I’m going”?
Does she keep expecting to hear the key turn in the lock?
Perhaps the mind takes time to accept what the heart cannot bear. Perhaps some part of a mother continues waiting, even when everyone around her knows that the person she is waiting for will not return.
Sapna had spent years working as a nurse, standing beside patients and watching families experience fear, uncertainty, and grief.
But no professional experience can prepare a mother for losing her own child.
No knowledge of illness or death can make that loss easier to understand.
In her own home, she was no longer the nurse who knew how to care for others.
She was a mother who had lost her only daughter.
And all she could say was, “Meri ghar ki Durga chali gayi.”
The House That Will Never Feel the Same
I keep imagining the house in Malir Bagan after Sriparna’s death.
The familiar rooms. The everyday things that have not changed. The place where she kept her belongings. The door through which she used to leave for work.
The electricity bill will still arrive.
The household will still need groceries. Medicines will still be needed. The ordinary responsibilities of life will continue to exist.
But the person who helped carry those responsibilities is no longer there.
This is one of the cruelest things about losing someone.
The world continues with its usual routine, even when your own world has stopped.
People still go to work. Shops open. Traffic moves through the streets. Festivals continue to be celebrated.
But inside one house, a family is trying to understand how to live with an absence that cannot be filled.
Sriparna was twenty-seven. She should have had years ahead of her.
There could have been new opportunities in her career, journeys she had not yet taken, festivals she had not yet celebrated, and countless ordinary evenings spent talking to her parents.
Her parents might have imagined seeing her grow older, watching her build a future, and continuing to share the small moments that make family life meaningful.
Those possibilities disappeared with her.
And for parents who had only one child, the silence must feel especially difficult to bear.
There is no brother or sister walking into the room to remind them of her childhood in another way. No other child coming home to break the silence.
The daughter who had helped make their house feel secure is no longer there.
I do not think any words can properly describe what that means to a mother.
A Nurse Who Spent Her Life Caring for Others
There is something especially heartbreaking about Sriparna’s profession.
She worked as a nurse in a cancer centre, a place where people and their families often face some of the most frightening moments of their lives.
Nurses witness pain that many people cannot imagine. They help patients through difficult treatments, comfort families, and continue working even when the day has been emotionally exhausting.
Sriparna had chosen a profession built around caring for others.
And outside the hospital, she continued to be someone people could turn to.
Her work supported her family. Her knowledge helped those around her. Her presence gave her parents confidence about their future.
It is easy to look at a young person and see only their age.
Twenty-seven sounds young because it is young. It is an age when so much of life is still beginning.
But Sriparna had already become important in so many ways.
She was a healthcare professional, a daughter, a source of financial support, and someone whose kindness was remembered by her neighbours.
Her value was never limited to the money she earned or the duties she performed.
It was also in the care she gave, the responsibilities she accepted, and the quiet ways she made life easier for others.
Sometimes, we understand a person’s importance most clearly when we see the space they leave behind.
Not because they were famous.
Not because the world knew their name.
But because a small circle of people depended on them, loved them, and expected them to be there tomorrow.
For Sriparna’s parents, she was not one person among millions.
She was their daughter.
She was their world.
When a Festival Becomes a Memory of Loss
Durga Puja is a festival of devotion, celebration, and the return of the goddess.
Families gather. People visit pandals. Children run through decorated streets. Friends make plans, and homes fill with the sounds of conversations and laughter.
But for a family that has lost someone during the festival, those same sights can carry a different meaning.
The lights may still shine, but they can remind a mother of the daughter who will never come home.
The crowds may still gather, but they can bring back memories of the place where everything changed.
The prayers may still be offered, but grief can make even familiar rituals feel unfamiliar.
For Sapna, Durga Puja may never again be only about the arrival of Goddess Durga.
It will also be connected to the daughter she lost.
I cannot know exactly what she feels or how she will experience every festival in the years ahead. Grief is deeply personal, and every person carries it differently.
But I can understand why those words have stayed with me.
“Meri ghar ki Durga chali gayi.”
They express something that a long explanation might never capture.
A mother was not simply mourning the death of her daughter. She was mourning the person who gave her home its sense of security, companionship, and hope.
The goddess people celebrated in the pandals was surrounded by lights, flowers, and prayers.
The Durga Sapna loved was the daughter who made an ordinary house feel complete.
And now, the house had to learn how to exist without her.
What Her Story Makes Me Think About
I keep returning to the thought of how ordinary that morning must have seemed.
A daughter leaving for work.
A mother hearing her say goodbye.
A plan to meet friends later.
Nobody expects a day like that to become the moment that divides life into before and after.
We often believe that we will have more time with our parents, our children, our partners, and our friends.
We postpone conversations. We delay visits. We say we are too busy to spend an evening together because there will always be another opportunity.
And most of the time, life allows us to believe that.
But stories like Sriparna’s remind me how precious ordinary time really is.
The opportunity to sit beside your mother is precious.
The chance to ask your father how he is feeling is precious.
The simple experience of coming home after work and finding someone waiting for you is precious.
We do not need to live in fear of losing the people we love. But we can learn not to treat their presence as something guaranteed.
There is also a larger question that remains with me: how do we make public celebrations safer for the people who attend them?
Festivals should bring communities together in happiness and devotion. People should be able to visit pandals without fearing dangerous crowding or being unable to reach an exit safely.
The loss of a young life should make us think seriously about crowd management, safe exits, emergency planning, and the responsibility of organisers and authorities.
A festival should leave families with memories they can cherish.
No parent should have to return home with the words Sapna Poddar was left repeating.
Meri Ghar Ki Durga Chali Gayi
I do not know how a mother finds the strength to continue after losing her only child.
Perhaps there is no single moment when the pain becomes smaller. Perhaps a person simply learns to carry it, day after day, while memories become part of everything around them.
A familiar song may bring back a voice.
An old photograph may bring back a smile.
A festival may bring back the memory of the daughter who once walked out of the house, believing she would return.
And somewhere in that home in Baidyabati, the words may continue to hold a meaning that no one outside the family can fully understand.
“Meri ghar ki Durga chali gayi.”
When I think about Sriparna, I do not want to remember her only as a young woman who died during a festival.
I want to remember the daughter who worked hard, the nurse who cared for people, and the young woman who quietly carried the responsibilities of her family.
I want to remember that behind every tragic headline is a person whose life mattered long before the world heard their name.
She had a home. She had parents who loved her. She had work, responsibilities, kindness, and a future that should have been allowed to unfold.
She was only twenty-seven.
And to her mother, she was Durga.
During Durga Puja, people celebrate the goddess’s arrival and pray for strength, protection, and happiness.
But for one mother, the festival became a reminder of the daughter who had been her strength and support.
The city may continue to celebrate. The pandals may come alive with lights again. Another Durga Puja will arrive.
But a mother’s loss cannot be measured by the passing of a festival.
Sometimes, the Durga we worship is not only the goddess in a pandal. Sometimes, she is the daughter who holds a family together, the woman who cares for everyone, and the person whose absence leaves an entire home silent.
And when that Durga leaves, the house never feels quite the same again.
Disclaimer : This article is published on my medium account
https://medium.com/@najariya/meri-ghar-ki-durga-chali-gayi-1d7830b983d4
