Google celebrates Pohela Boishakh with special doodle

Search engine giant Google is celebrating Pohela Boishakh, the first day of the Bangla New Year, by replacing its regular home page graphic with a special doodle for the Bangladeshi surfers.

Today’s doodle commemorates the festival of Pohela Boishakh, depicting the masks used during the Mongol Shobhajatra procession.

The doodle shows two hands decorating masks with red, blue, green, and various other colours. One of the two colourful figures is a Bengal tiger.

Whether at home or abroad, Bengalis worldwide warmly greet each other with, Shubho Noboborsho, the customary way to wish each other a prosperous and happy New Year.

One of the most traditional Pohela Boishakh celebrations commences after dawn underneath an ancient Banyan tree at Dhaka’s Ramna Park. Mongol Shobhajatra is a radiant carnival procession that begins at the Institute of Fine Arts at Dhaka University.

The festive spirit blends young and old, as they wear colourful masks and parade with massive cutouts of animals as a way to symbolize Bengali cultural diversity, heritage, and identity of the people.

The nation celebrates with street parades, fairs, and grand concerts as a way to unify the Bengalis to welcome another year to come.

But this year, like 2020, Pohela Boishakh is being observed across Bangladesh on Wednesday without outdoor programs due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This year, the programs were cancelled to avoid mass gatherings in a bid to curb the transmission of the novel coronavirus, in light of the recent surge in Covid-19 cases and deaths. 

All television channels aired a special program in the morning to digitally celebrate the day.

Introduced in 1998, Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the logo on Google’s homepage that is intended to celebrate holidays, events, achievements and people.