A TALE OF TWO PUJAS - SUDESHNA BANERJEE

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A TALE OF TWO PUJAS

Sudeshna Banerjee writes of the pujas of her childhood and those that left the deepest impression

As one born and brought up in Bengal and writing on Durga puja for over two decades, how many Durga pujas have I seen in my life? The answer will be the same as for most of you – countless.

When I was a child, there was an urge to add to the tally, which means to run from one pandal to the other, following the hint of lighting at the far corner of the street. While pandal-hopping in a car, the call of conscience was whether to count the deities in the roadside pandals we did not stop to enter as “seen” . Yet there would be enough to see in the city on Sashthi evening and on the way to our ancestral seat in Ranaghat, Nadia on Saptami morning for me to hit a century of ‘thakur dekha’ by the time I bowed my head before Ma Dugga in our Madhyapalli puja on Rabindra Sarani, founded by my uncle and his friends, and carried on by my cousins and their pals.

In the districts, we had what we called lorry pandals, where a simple canopy propped up with bamboo poles and open on three sides, would have a porch with pleated cloth of two or three colours as the sole decorative element, jutting out much like the driver’s cabin in lorries. The bamboo poles arrived on Mahalaya and even on Sashthi afternoon, the decorators’ men would be still at it.

The Calcutta pandals were always in a league of their own. Though far more elaborate than their district counterparts, many of even them would hardly be ready before Sashthi. So Sashthi evening was my only chance to see ‘Kolkatar thakur’ before we left town. During that pandal-hopping trip in the city, counting the number of asuras or noting their body colour at the Mohd Ali Park puja was an important task. Once there were eight asuras! Another time, he was sea green! The themes of lighting at College Square were another point to note. The challenge there was of not letting go of my father’s hand in the crowd while being engrossed in watching the lights. These would be the talking points when my district relatives would ask “E bochhor Kolkatar pujoy ki holo re?” Those were the days before the Internet, phone cameras and 24x7 news channels.

Calcutta pujas have come a long way. There is no chance of covering Md Ali Park, College Square, Park Circus and Baghbazar in one evening and claiming, as I did as a child, that I “had seen Kolkatar pujo” . The crowd has multiplied, as has traffic. But it is not just logistics that comes in the way, despite Kolkata Police doing a fabulous job. There are simply too many “good pujas” in any locality to leave the area in a jiffy.

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Some people therefore choose their stops these days going by established theme-maker names or choose areas with the highest concentration of big-budget pandals. The aesthetic splendour never ceases to surprise. That is the biggest and most unique selling point of our Durga puja. Ganapati Utsav of Mumbai may tower with their gigantic Ganesha idols but when it comes to finesse of the setting, Durga puja of Calcutta ranks with the finest demonstrations of public art anywhere in the world.

Yet when I asked myself after all these years which is the most memorable puja I have seen, I found myself thinking of two for radically different reasons.

Years ago, I had been at risk of suffocation – I will not name the puja – and learnt the hard way the need to check the theme before visiting any pandal. They had created an underground cave – a recipe for disaster with uneven surfaces, dim lighting and little ventilation. Such pandals, thankfully, are a thing of the past at least in the city as they would simply not make the cut on the scales of puja awards or pass the more stringent fire safety checks.

Thinking of the other puja still warms the cockles of my heart. The year was around 2007-08. It was a wee little pandal, barely four feet in height, installed on a natural mound of clay. The idol could be measured in inches. The decoration of paper cuttings and such was done by the young volunteers, much like for Saraswati puja in schools. It was clearly an economically backward neighbourhood and I had found the puja by a happy accident. The youngsters, seen helping the priest with a lot of enthusiasm, said their budget was Rs 36,000 and they said it with a smile, without the faintest trace of regret or sense of deprivation.

When speaking to outsiders, I may be talking of the fantastic themes and spectacular monuments that Calcutta has witnessed coming up on its streetsides for Durga puja, and these may rightfully be the reason why Durga Puja of Calcutta features today on the UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Hearitage of Humanity, but when I put the question to myself, that intimate puja, away from the spotlight, whose name never hit the news headlines or made the awards lists, has remained my personal favourite.

Sudeshna is a journalist with The Telegraph, a leading English daily of Calcutta and the author of 'Durga Puja: Celebrating the Goddess Then & Now' published by Rupa & Co. Her book has been cited as a part of the submitted dossier that resulted in Kolkata Durga Pujo being inscribed on the Representative List of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage.

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