AGARTALA, Sep 28 (TIWN): Tripura’s Durga Puja spirit picked up from Maha Ashtami after some showers on Saptami-- the "Maha Ashtami" day -- as attired in their best, people visited Puja marquees to pray to the Goddess and participate in the festivities across Tripura. In accordance with custom, fasting devotees offered flowers to the Goddess in obeisance and later feasted on an array of delicacies. Bells chimed, cymbals clanged and the invigorating beats of "dhaak" (drums) set the mood for celebrations. This is also the time when people meet friends and family, relish the array of street food being sold since morning in makeshift stalls.Neither a brief spell of rain in some parts of Tripura nor a rain forecast in the evening dampens the spirits. Massive traffic jams, road blocks in addition to pathetic conditioned city roads from Battala to other parts of Tripura capital failed to suppress spirits.

More than 100  community pujas have been organised in Agartala and suburbs, with diverse themes, lighting and decorations wooing the revellers.

The five-day carnival is the biggest annual event in this part of the world as roads are choked with human traffic throughout the day and night.

People from the capital city Agartala, Tripura villages, other parts of India as also various countries walk shoulder to shoulder in gay abandon, paying obeisance to the goddess and watching the colossal marquees -- many of them beautiful works of art -- on Maha Ashtami (the eighth lunar day).

Amid the passion to beat one another and the healthy competition, marquees both big and small, are there to captivate spectators.

According to the Hindu mythology, festivities and prayers begin with the symbolic arrival of the Goddess on earth on the sixth day of the first quarter of the moon, and ends on Dashami or the 10th day, which is celebrated across the country as Dussehra.

Traditionally, every pandal has an idol of Goddess Durga depicting her as slaying the demon Mahishasura. She is shown astride a lion and wielding an array of weapons in her arms.