I do not remember the moonless nights when I lay across my parent's lap as the rickshaw tottered past the high walls of the thermal power station of Shyamnagar. I have only vague memories of those three gargantuan chimneys staring down like Macbeth's witches; Their hair a cloud of soot darker than the night. I do remember the occasional sharp pain when a spec of coal-dust managed to pass through my battering eyelids; And, I remember Ma puffing on her handkerchief and placing the warm cloth over my eyes to abate that pain. She had reminded me so often not to look up while we passed the chimneys that I considered it chivalric to do so.
Like most childhood memories, mine too are a mix of recollections, imaginations, and parental and grand-parental hearsay. Some may never have happened and only stay with me because somewhere deep within I always wanted them to happen. Like the punch I always wanted to give back to my schoolmate Cheng Jung Pin but never could. In truth he had rightfully punched me in my solar plexus for toying with his silky Chinese hair once too often; A blow that has taken two full decades to digest.
As a child, I liked Durga Pujo but never could enjoy it the way a quintessential Bengali ought to. I liked the adoration (that came with being the youngest) when the family met. I abhorred the cheek-pinching that accompanied it. I liked the walk to the Pujo pandals, but not in those extra-starched silk punjabis that were made mandatory for the occasion. I liked the lights, but not the sound. Every time i saw some street urchin with an incense stick in one hand I knew there was a chocolate bomb waiting to be ignited in the other. It did not help that my kaku held me by my wrist while we walked because I needed two hands to muffle two ears from the impending bang! I loved the roadside phhuchka, aloor dom, and chicken roll (inevitably downgraded to an egg roll by my over-cautious parents), but not the abdominal pain that ensued. I liked staring at the rotund Ganesh (always rouged with a hue of pink I know not why) but was scared to look at the demon at the foot of the goddess. That is why I preferred to view the idols sitting on my father's shoulders. It prevented me from having to look straight into the eyes of the mahisha (buffalo) that seemed to have an odd knack of finding the gazes of little boys.
I have grown through many more Durga Pujos since then, realizing every passing year that Pujo has very little to do with God and is more about a brief period of much needed pause from ones' routine. How one uses it is one's individual choice and not a dictum from above. Some meditate in the mountains while others frolic in the streets. It is all the same as long as it brings joy, even if momentarily. This year I spent most of Pujo driving with my family through a part of a continent far beyond ours. We drove through the grandest of canyons, the deepest of gorges, the red rocky hinterlands, the parched fallow countryside and ossified flora from a forgotten millennia. The experience could not have been more different from the din of the pandals of South Kolkata; yet one could not but feel the presence of an omnipotent force in these places. Places where human footprints seem ever so small and personal endeavours petty. I have seen the sun set at the Grand Canyon and a million stars fill the night sky. I have seen the Milky Way for the first time outside a planetarium. I have driven through miles of desolate countryside imagining how it might have been to dwell in it's midst in the days before the wheel. That air, water, fire and earth are elementary forces have been taught to me. Now I know they truly are because I have seen the results. My Durga Pujo is strangely complete because I have witnessed the godly forces of nature; albeit not in the pandals among the beats of the dhak and the dhunuchi naach.
Like most childhood memories, mine too are a mix of recollections, imaginations, and parental and grand-parental hearsay. Some may never have happened and only stay with me because somewhere deep within I always wanted them to happen. Like the punch I always wanted to give back to my schoolmate Cheng Jung Pin but never could. In truth he had rightfully punched me in my solar plexus for toying with his silky Chinese hair once too often; A blow that has taken two full decades to digest.
As a child, I liked Durga Pujo but never could enjoy it the way a quintessential Bengali ought to. I liked the adoration (that came with being the youngest) when the family met. I abhorred the cheek-pinching that accompanied it. I liked the walk to the Pujo pandals, but not in those extra-starched silk punjabis that were made mandatory for the occasion. I liked the lights, but not the sound. Every time i saw some street urchin with an incense stick in one hand I knew there was a chocolate bomb waiting to be ignited in the other. It did not help that my kaku held me by my wrist while we walked because I needed two hands to muffle two ears from the impending bang! I loved the roadside phhuchka, aloor dom, and chicken roll (inevitably downgraded to an egg roll by my over-cautious parents), but not the abdominal pain that ensued. I liked staring at the rotund Ganesh (always rouged with a hue of pink I know not why) but was scared to look at the demon at the foot of the goddess. That is why I preferred to view the idols sitting on my father's shoulders. It prevented me from having to look straight into the eyes of the mahisha (buffalo) that seemed to have an odd knack of finding the gazes of little boys.
I have grown through many more Durga Pujos since then, realizing every passing year that Pujo has very little to do with God and is more about a brief period of much needed pause from ones' routine. How one uses it is one's individual choice and not a dictum from above. Some meditate in the mountains while others frolic in the streets. It is all the same as long as it brings joy, even if momentarily. This year I spent most of Pujo driving with my family through a part of a continent far beyond ours. We drove through the grandest of canyons, the deepest of gorges, the red rocky hinterlands, the parched fallow countryside and ossified flora from a forgotten millennia. The experience could not have been more different from the din of the pandals of South Kolkata; yet one could not but feel the presence of an omnipotent force in these places. Places where human footprints seem ever so small and personal endeavours petty. I have seen the sun set at the Grand Canyon and a million stars fill the night sky. I have seen the Milky Way for the first time outside a planetarium. I have driven through miles of desolate countryside imagining how it might have been to dwell in it's midst in the days before the wheel. That air, water, fire and earth are elementary forces have been taught to me. Now I know they truly are because I have seen the results. My Durga Pujo is strangely complete because I have witnessed the godly forces of nature; albeit not in the pandals among the beats of the dhak and the dhunuchi naach.
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