That "Pujo Pujo" feeling...

Last working day before the puja hols. But the puja fever is so infectitious that going to work even on shoshti was enjoyable. Pujo essentials are hard at work, doing their bit to add to that special "pujo pujo" feeling.

Jams - It took us 2 hours from Thakurpukur to Rash Behari - about 12 kms maybe?! Pandal lights - not fully lit yet - still early days or maybe recession? Shehnai - thankgod a few pandals are still airing shehnai. Most are however airing Mahishasur Mardini and somehow spoiling it because it is to be aired only on Mahalaya at 4.30am in the hushed silence of dawn and not amid the cacaphony of a million vehicles, people, claxons, vendors. And Protimas? In the pandals, but still undergoing finishing touches...

(no weapons in Ma Durga's hands, yet!)

And this morning, as my bus slow downed at Kalighat - we found an impromptu dhaki'r haat in full swing, lining both sides of the road! What a sight to behold. People from all over were frantically bargaining, finalising and then moving off with dhakis... how do I know? Well two men got into our bus with two dhakis! That's how. Each dhaki was showing off his skill and yet not a discordnat note despite all the frantic drumming. Added to the pujo pujo feeling. Sigh!

Vastra Samman - Join the effort, this festival season

Goonj is organizing “Vastra Samman” – a nationwide awareness cum collection campaign September 27th to October 2009.

There are 25 collection centres through out the country. Contribute clothes – not merely the old ones. Clothes that you had bought on an impulse and never wore, clothing you thought looked good in the store but not so at home, clothing that you will wear when you slim down, clothes that you haven’t touched for years and yet are loathe to give away.

This festival season join and help make this initiative a success.


More on Vastra Samman, here.
Collection Centres, here.

Durga Puja, here is it?

That golden sunlight of sharod? That crush of last minute shoppers, pandals coming up hinting tantalising of the fantastic shapes and forms they will eventually reveal and giving rise to horrific jams along with the shoppers. And then what? All of Kolkata and surrounding districts (all 19 of them) jostling, shoving, elbowing their way everywhere ... on roads, lanes, gullies, shops, footpaths, pandals...

And that eternal dilemma - To go see the pandals (a very wearisome, tiresome, pain inducing - head, bone and joints, knees and in a multitude other places...the thrill of having seen incredible pujos and irritation at not being able to describe it to those who havent) or not to go and sit at home, not achy all over... except perhaps in the heart... and feeling curiously flat and left out. Is this then, the pujo'r amej?

Well its been so hot and sticky with some furious but short spells of rains...not much golden sarad sunlight. And the crowds...well they have been curiously absent...even though we have been returning home each night quaking with fear of getting stuck. Hasnt' happened yet. Even the pandals are snailing their way up. Are not even causing any traffic jams...Usually by this time, one would be able to tell what each pandal would be like. . And I find myself missing it all...the empty roads, the bamboo-rope-canvas pandals look so naked and sad and we are verging on Panchami...which is tomorrow. Were the build up to the pujas ever so silent? Ever so frenzy-less? Ever so not chaotic?

Then I come home, look out the window and see among dark trees, under a cloudy sky, the Maddox Square pandal - finished at last...standing white, serene in the dark calm of night .... waiting for the rush, from tomorrow or perhaps day after...

Mahalaya

Today is Mahalaya. And it had to begin like almost all Mahalayas of my life: Listening to Mahishasur Mardini on AIR. The night at its darkest just before dawn, all the world ahush, waking up when ma creeps into our room to put the radio on, the static on AIR, the blowing of the conch to signal the begining of the programme itself.

It has been such an important part of not only our durga pujas past but of our peripatetic lives as well - in our cosy blue bedroom in the small bungalow and then the larger one in Assam, in Kuwait when our nutty ma would (god bless her) put on a cassette at 4.00 am (thank god Kuwait time) on Mahalaya and now ofcourse here in Kolkata.

Since 1932 when it was first aired, it is a part and parcel of durga puja for bengalis the world over. Difficult to say whether Mahalaya means Mahishasur Mardini or vice versa. Such is the popularity (popularity is so inadequate a word...fervour maybe) that the TV programmes a recent development only 10-15 years old are timed to coincide with the ending of the Radio programme.

It is sacred. Every bit of it - right from the blowing of the conch shell at the begining and the end of the programme, all songs, all chants, the music everthing inlcuding the names of the participants - almost legendary now - Banikumar, Birendra Krishna Bhadra and Pankaj Mullick.
Any changes (a few have been tried) have ended in abject failure - rejected unanimously.

The piling up of bamboos, bundles of rope, corrugated tins, canvas tarps by the road side; structures coming slowly, bamboo girders on footpath, festoons and banners, pandals coming up bit by bit, puja barshikis...all important part of the count down till Mahalaya and Mahishasur Mardini on AIR at 4am. We'd lie snug in our beds half asleep, half awake and as the programme would draw to an end, the sun would rise. I would often fall asleep in the middle to wake up to hear another bit and the doze off to find that the programme had ended but with a contended sigh think, there is always next year.

Is there? Will there be? This year, when the final song Shanti sang by Utpala Sen finished, we waited to hear the illustrious list of names as much a part of the whole process...but were aghast.. to hear ads 0ne after the other....harsh raucous and completely shatterring, infact it felt like a violation of something sacred.