THE PUJA RITUAL

 Pandal hopping in Kolkata during Durga Puja has always been an attraction. Being born and brought up in a suburban town, it was a great feat for me to visit Kolkata pandals. My oldest memories of Kolkata puja are tram ride and pandal hopping with my father’s friend and his family. I still remember we used to go to Pamdapukur and I used to look at the pandal in the middle of the pond with a lot of amazement. As I was growing up, the fun was more in running around with my friends in my neighbourhod than taking the plight of wading through the waves of revelers to have a glimpse of the pandals and the idols in Kolkata, as over years, the number of pandal hoppers increased manifold with the advent of ‘theme puja’. In later years, thanks to my friends in Kolkata, I made it a point to visit Kolkata atleast one day during the puja, more to have adda with them rather than queuing up with thousand others to enter the pandals. For many, flaunting the list of pandals they visited was like showing off their treasure. I wanted to stay away from this practice.

During my college days, Durga Puja in Madox Square was a new revelation. Having endless adda with friends at the Madox Square puja ground brought a new kind of pleasure. For us it was like a reunion. All the past and present students of our college gathered there during the festival. Over the years the quality of the crowd changed. Madox remained as nostalgia in many of our hearts.

For last few years my wife has dragged me into a Durga Puja ‘ritual’ I preferred to stay away from. As a Delhi girl, her experience of Kolkata Puja was limited to TV viewing. So I took the responsibility, in the first year of our marriage, to introduce her to Kolkata Puja. We decided to take a round of the city pandals on Chaturthi/Panchami day before the revelers could crowd them. Now the ‘introduction’ has become a habit. I never thought that I would go overnight pandal hopping every year. But I do.

From next year I really wish to give this ‘ritualistic habit’ a pass. These days we no longer go to a pandal to find if Mother Dura has angry eyes or calm ones, if the asura has the right moustache, if the trident has hit the right part of the asura’s chest. It is more like, as one of my friends puts it, the greatest celebration of art. At every thematic pandal, it appears as an open quiz to understand the theme of the pandal. The same uses of abstract idea in erection of the pandals, the same use of light and darkness, overuse of blue and red lights have started to bore me.

Simple adda and good food should be all that I wish to enjoy during Durga Puja, may be, like a boring Bengali.