{"id":11400,"date":"2012-10-21T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-21T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2012\/10\/21\/now-crash-course-for-priests-to-counter-crunch-during-durga-puja\/"},"modified":"2012-10-21T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-21T12:00:00","slug":"now-crash-course-for-priests-to-counter-crunch-during-durga-puja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2012\/10\/21\/now-crash-course-for-priests-to-counter-crunch-during-durga-puja\/","title":{"rendered":"Now, Crash Course For Priests To Counter Crunch During Durga Puja"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.firstpost.com\/fwire\/now-crash-course-for-priests-to-counter-crunch-during-durga-puja-494955.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>KOLKATA, INDIA, October 18, 2012 (firstpost.com): As the city remains busy doing last-minute shopping before the Durga Puja festivities kick off this weekend, a group of young men rehearses shlokas and rituals at a crash course to counter a priest shortage in Kolkata. Due to the mushrooming puja committees in the city and its outskirts, a shortage of skilled priests has been felt each year. To match the demand, the West Bengal Pandit and Purohit Association is running a crash course at Maniktala temple for priests ahead of the Durga Puja.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The number of pujas is increasing, but the number of priests has remained the same. As a result, those without having complete and proper knowledge of the rules get engaged as priests. Many of them chant wrong or miss steps while performing rituals,&#8221; Netai Chakraborty, president of the association, said.<br \/>\nApplicants with a basic knowledge of rituals are allowed to enroll in the week-long workshop. Under the guidance of veteran priests, the students, mostly from the districts, are taught the rituals of worship and how to carry out the deity&#8217;s puja in accordance with Hindu scriptures. Not only does the course encourage newcomers to take their ancestral profession, but it also acts as a refresher course for those who have been into the profession for a few years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source KOLKATA, INDIA, October 18, 2012 (firstpost.com): As the city remains busy doing last-minute shopping before the Durga Puja festivities,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}