{"id":7679,"date":"2009-05-02T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-02T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/05\/02\/trinidad-celebrates-balka-a-puja-to-durga-and-a-volcano-deva\/"},"modified":"2009-05-02T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-02T12:00:00","slug":"trinidad-celebrates-balka-a-puja-to-durga-and-a-volcano-deva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/05\/02\/trinidad-celebrates-balka-a-puja-to-durga-and-a-volcano-deva\/","title":{"rendered":"Trinidad Celebrates Balka, a Puja to Durga and a Volcano Deva"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\">HPI<\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">PORT-OF-SPAIN, TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO, April 26, 2009: Trinidad and Tobago  celebrated an unusual puja last Sunday. The &#8220;Balka or Volcano Puja&#8221; takes place annually at the Columbia Estate on the southwestern peninsula, on the site of an existing volcano. It is ritualistically observed in the month of April.<\/p>\n<p>Unconfirmed reports state that this Puja has been taking place for well over 120 years or four generations. According to one villager, the Balka Puja is performed to &#8220;Shanti Karo,&#8221; the volcano deva. Durga is also worshiped.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Stream of Hindus took the long trek to worship and make offerings, and a powerful Durga Puja was performed. Over the years, the number of participants has increased tremendously; the numbers keep inflating&#8221;, Ashram B.Maharaj,  a spokesman for the organising committee, said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HPI PORT-OF-SPAIN, TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO, April 26, 2009: Trinidad and Tobago celebrated an unusual puja last Sunday. The &#8220;Balka or,&#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-7679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7679","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=7679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}