The Kolkata-based digital creator, with 1.2 million Instagram followers, asks why soil can be revered as sacred while the women associated with it face judgement.
GRS News India : Kolkata, 19 October 2026 — Digital creator Hemoshree Bhadra has presented a Durga Puja-themed photo series that asks a powerful question: Can a society truly honour the divine feminine while looking down on women in everyday life?
Set before an elaborate idol of Maa Durga, the photographs show Bhadra in a traditional white sari with a red blouse. In one frame, she offers a handful of soil to a man who bows his head to receive it. Another captures a makeup artist applying kajal to her eyes. A third pulls back to reveal cameras, lights and a production crew, while a handheld mirror obscures her face.
The central reference is punya mati, or sacred soil. In a longstanding tradition associated with some Durga idol-making practices in Bengal, soil from the doorstep of a sex worker’s home is included in the clay used to make the idol. Bhadra uses this cultural symbolism to highlight a social contradiction: soil can be welcomed into a sacred ritual even as women linked to that tradition may face stigma and moral judgement.
“People bow their heads to receive the sacred soil, yet so often look down on the woman who gives it. If her soil is worthy of the Goddess, why is her dignity still questioned? Worship should teach us respect, not selective respect,” says Bhadra.
The series also places a woman’s public image under the spotlight. The makeup brush, the mirror and the surrounding cameras invite viewers to consider how women are seen, presented and judged—often by their clothing, appearance or profession rather than their humanity.
Rather than questioning devotion to Maa Durga, the photographs invite viewers to extend that devotion’s values beyond the pandal.
Their message is simple: Reverence for a goddess should never coexist with contempt for a woman.
