Winding through the twisting alleys of Shankharia Bazaar, commonly known in Dhaka as Hindu Street, the Durga Puja pandals line the paths, rising on rafters every forty feet or so, perched on platforms hovering on crisscrosses of stilts above the throngs of devotees pushing their way down the narrow dirt roads. The conch shell bracelet sellers meld into the gold sellers, into the book sellers and eventually the convenience shops, punctuated by small shrines erected in temples that could have been easily mistaken for home or storefronts on any other night.

On this night, the second to last of the Durga Puja celebration, the crowd ebbs and flows from the gates, moving in and out. Looking up to the idols perched above - Durga standing grandly, her husband pinned down under one of her feet, her teeth clamped down on her tongue as revealed by closer inspection, a repentance for this offense. The devotees bring their palms together in front of their heart, touch their fingertips to their foreheads. The women meet the bindis hovering between their well-threaded eyebrows, the men the beads of sweat sliding down from their hairline. Cellphones dot the crowd, children claw at their parents for water, the crowd flows forward to the next mandap.