The Goddess Chronicles (Durga Puja Journal - I)

Today was Mahalaya, the day she starts on her journey to this human world from her abode in Kailash. Having left her husband Shiv to the care of a company of lovable drunks and smokers she sets off from the mountains to arrive in five days time in the pandals of Bengal, in the community pujas of London and places further.
The city on this day every year and small towns and villages, early in the morning, wakes up to hear the musical programme to mark the occasion. This time with the rains, the early morning had that extra excitement to it. Of course not for those whose houses were flooded for the Kolkata Corporation had failed them. The Corporation’s men and their leaders in turn blamed the choked brick sewers from British times which run like rat holes below streets and alleys of old Calcutta.
While radio Mirchi played the Mahalaya musical in the dark room another station from a neighbour’s radio came on air. The phase difference between the two stations, playing the same programme, made my early morning experience a bit queer. As my radio Mirchi was finished with the slaying of the demon-king Mahishashura, the neighbour’s radio was still busy with arming goddess Durga with the various weapons that she will finally use in the battle. I switched off the set and went to sleep.
It is raining through the day and news channels are telling us that boats have appeared in important city crossings – Manicktola, Kidderpore. Again the face of the mayor on TV spelling out the rainfall in millimetres, to make it appear more dramatic. And to stress on his helplessness. `If it doesn’t rain anymore then the water will go down,’ he says. What does he mean by that! Newspapers and television is discussing whether we will have a wet Durga Puja this year.

We publish a journal that tries to make an erudite pitch for a better future. The next issue has to be printed before she reaches the plains and slips into the pandals but our design guy is taking this day off. And the prices, one of the printers are charging seems to have a life of its own, just like the price of every other thing before Pujas. I have asked my colleague to check out if we would need boats to make it to the printer’s tomorrow.
Previously there used to be spontaneous debates or programmed discussions on TV at this time of the year about shoe companies or vest manufacturers sponsoring neighbourhood pujas and whether this is a good or bad trend. Those debates have fizzled out as more and more corporates join the fray. And perhaps this has given us more of the themed pujas with glamorous pandals inspired by everything from Rajasthani forts to temples of South India.
And with companies sponsoring competitions the strangeness and variety of ideas seems unending. Last year we had a pandal made out of old broken records this year a goddess created from postage stamps (matchsticks, lozenges and other stuff in between). Of course many music lovers did not like the idea of broken records and I fail to see the significance of postage stamps.
Then of course there are decorations with lights-we used to call them toony bulbs. I hear most of these bulbs now come from China and these are used not only to beautify the pandals and its environs-swathed over trees, hung along roads flickering or gazing steadily through the nights- but also arranged to depict scenes from recent memory. Memories like Zidane’s head-butt in the football world cup, of the little boy Prince rescued from an old unused well after holding the nation on tenterhooks for a week and so on.

When we were young, the idol-makers of Kumartuli would have Bollywood divas as inspiration and we would find the goddess sometimes with the face of a Hema Malini or a SriDevi or the demon-king with the face of Amjad Khan. Haven’t heard of film stars this year but a particularly belligerent supporter of the erstwhile Indian cricketing captain had the idea of modelling the face of Mahisasura (the demon-king who is slain by Durga) after Greg Chapell who coaches the national team now, and who it has been heard was not quite favourable of Ganguly continuing in the team. But the police somehow got wind of this and the face had to be changed. It’s interesting to see the police becoming proactive on such occasions.
Coming back to theme pujas, and beautiful idols and gorgeous designs of the pandals, things got a fillip from the time artists began to commissioned by puja committees to supervise the themes and designs. They came out with splendid ideas and sparkling ideas and sometimes the pandals they created were so too good to be thrown away after the five days of the goddess’ stay was over. In fact I heard last year that someone was thinking of preserving some of these beautiful creations and in fact I would say we should ask UNESCO and others to help set up permanent exhibits of some of these pandals.

One pandal that I would like to visit this year is of the Netaji Sporting Club which is themed on patal-the nether world-and places Durga in an intricate array of caves and difficult terrain all created by an artist and his men. The goddesses image is also modelled after an ancient bas-relief idol and woven around the story of patal-bhairavi. The only problem is with the crowds and if the rain gods (its as if the Bombay rains have been imported into this city, it goes on ferociously beautiful) are having a tiff with Durga and her family, then it would become difficult to move about in the city.
The buses are anyway crowded and the autorickshaws are often charging black-market fares. Travelling within the city is at a premium and even the metro is chockfull with puja shoppers.

I have read two newspapers today. One has printed Calcutta police’s blurred map of the important pujas in north Calcutta while the other is talking of the variations and types of saris she will be decked in this year. While benarasi is the tradition we will see everything from lalpere (white with a red border) to black and white geometry. One adventurous guy had also been thinking of cladding her in a ghagra-choli (the pleated skirt and blouse) but we hear he hasn’t been brave enough. Anandamela, the children’s magazine, published by Ananda Bazar group (which is the biggest publishing house in Bengal and prints the Telegraph and Ananda Bazaar Patrika newspaper) has given her the modern mother touch, talking on her mobile phone while shopping out with her children. Laxmi in a salwar-kurta, Saraswati in a sleeveless T, while Ganesh (the elephant-head God of prosperity) tests out a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and Kartick looks around.

What will I be doing during the three days of Puja? Maybe the first day I will be hanging out with friends at Olypub. While I know I will splurge on the expensive whisky, I am not sure whether it will be Beef Chateaubriand or Chicken a la Kiev to accompany the smoky flavour of that rich drink. I will be updating this blog, catching up with Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockinbird, which I bought cheap from a non-decript busstand in a non-descript town of Uttar Pradesh. I will call Shalini and find out if she wants to meet me, then with her I could visit the nether world of patal-bhairavi.

Before I sign off there is a small incident that has ballooned (thanks to the media)
to comic proportions here in Bengal. A fine setting for the festivities to begin: One of the veteran communist leaders of Calcutta visited a famous temple in Tarapith (where the mother goddess Tara is worshipped) a few days back and made some statements that were lapped up by the media. How could a communist visit a temple and offer puja and do this and that? The questions began to grow strident on the newsprint and the boob tube. Another senior leader said that the leader in question may have gone of his rocker. Finally this first leader, had to clear himself by calling a press conference and restate his allegiance to dialectical materialism and state umpteen other reasons as to why he was there in the temple on that ill-fated day.
This press conference happened today and I believe will lay things to rest and the presswallahs will have to look for other things to lift puja spirits. As for myself and millions of others in this old beautiful city of ours, if the rain does not let up, tomorrow, we will have to go out and look for a boatman.

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(Durga image courtesy Society for Confluence of Cultures)