The Goddess Chronicles (Durga Puja Journal - III)

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She is here and it’s Saptami day today. I am sorry I missed out on an instalment of this posting. The press where we print the journal was flooded and there was disruption in power supply. But we managed to bring out the journal in time. I am a bit down with a bout of rhinitis that the puja-packed Calcutta metro has given me. Well that’s my guess at least.

Saptami is like the official start of pujas. Many offices remained open till yesterday (sashti). In the morning my work took me to the Chaltabagan puja pandal which is among the famous pujas of north Calcutta. This time they have put the goddess and her children in a great horse-drawn chariot – a mix of the scene from the Gita, where Krishna who drove Arjun’s chariot, egged the undecided Arjun to join the battle of Kurukhsetra. The goddess has taken the place of Arjun which might have mythological echoes but what is beautiful about Chaltabagan is the idol of Durga. Its an enchanting image created no doubt by an expert image-maker - a blend of sophistication and understated classicised beauty. The newspapers tell me next day that the Chief Minister’s wife came to visit the puja of Chaltabagan. Does it mean anything…who knows?
To the uninitiated the city suddenly looks like a museum of Indian heritage. Here you find the towering shikhara of a temple from Orissa spanning a street, built with near-perfect craftsmanship, a few blocks ahead an architectural marvel from Rajasthan transported as if by magic for a few days to this city of the east and again and again proud representations of a rich heritage of an ancient land. And in the evenings when the lights come on and the city moves into a scherzo of excitement these magnificent structures whisper (sometimes at forty sometimes at hundred decibels) the memories of a vibrant culture where tradition mixes with modernity and art with craftsmanship seamlessly and for ever.

In the afternoon yesterday I had to take the metro to the south and was almost suffocated in the crowd. Who are my co-passengers? Are offices letting of their employees early or maybe people have come out to do some last minute shopping. And of course there is the great number of people moving into the heart of the city from the suburbs and outlying areas and even far off villages to get a feel of the city pujas.

There are basically two kinds of pujas organised in the city. The first are the neighbourhood pujas (barwari pujo) which are funded by subscriptions from communities, people living in an area and organised mainly by local clubs, people of influence, cooperative societies and such like. The others are the more traditional family pujas (barir pujo) organised in homes by families who have been long time residents of the city. These other kinds of pujas also attract a lot of interest because of the traditions they invoke and appeal to.

I felt thirsty and tired after the metro ride and had a drink at a crowded Park Street bar. And then at last Shalini had called. After much hard work I got a taxi but when I reached our rendez-vous (about an hour late) she had gone. Having missed her again I concentrated on the lights on my way home. If you are travelling down Central Avenue or College street one of these days, Central Avenue more so with those ancient buildings built by rich Bengalis or their rulers on both sides, the imposing forms lit up by thousands of incandescent electric dots take you into a reverie and you know that your city is even more beautiful than the much more famous City of Lights.

There are apsaras and elephants, flowers and horses rampant, decorative art and abstraction in the coloured light work leading to the pandals and the sea of humanity waiting patiently behind the bamboo barricades to take their turn to look at the face of the Mother. I pass Kar Bagan, almost gaudy with light and lament the lack of aesthetic sensibility of some of these puja organisers.

The rain gods are busy with other things. Today there was one or two smart showers but not the incessant downpour of last week. The flood situation has also improved which everyone is happy to hear. People are visiting pandals in thousands and the organisers are also advertising their difference over the blaring public address systems. One puja in College street went on repeating again and again the display of more than four-hundred kinds of dolls from all districts of Bengal in their pandal. Begins to smell like post-modern kebab isn’t it? A huge advertisement possibly of some financial company near Seladah rail station is saying that sister Lakshmi and big-brother Ganesh (Lakshmi di and Ganesh da) – children of Durga – are coming to take care of your financial woes.

Near my home, past the grand display of lights and ideas, the imposing pandals and the teeming millions out to get their fifty rupees of fun and devotion, a small pandal in plain white and orange cloth attracts my attention. There is no fancy structure no decorations or grand display of lights. A single spotlight at the entrance shows the name of the club which is performing this puja. A muted amplifier is playing Debabrata Biswas’s rendition of a Tagore song that one can only hear when one enters the pandal. But under the simple fluroscent lighting of the pandal and through the smoke and haze of a tired Sashti evening, I behold one of the most dignified of Durga images that I have seen for a long time. She is an ocean of compassion while her pupils sparkle with the faint traces of great power – stilled frozen fires. The dhunuchi naach (the dance with the censers) is mesmerising and the aroma from the censers is heady.

I am happy but a little drunk when I reach home and get a trifle irritated when the puja organisers in the next block begin to play the Kaanta Laaga on the loudspeakers.

(©Copyright reserved by author. Published work.)
(The photograph shows Dhunuchi naach before the Goddess. It is copyright of a website.)

The Goddess Chronicles (Durga Puja Journal II)

The day approaches and we are like ants salvaging the festival. Some pandals are helplessly staring at us like shipwrecks. Yesterday however the fury of the rain subsided and we got better weather. Luckily we didn’t have to go looking for a boatman.
One of the English newspapers that I read published a puja supplement yesterday which they decided to call Utsav. It’s dedicated to err… `the spirit of womanhood.’ Talking of clichés, there is a whole book now written by an expert on how and what to avoid. Anyway the supplement is stuffed with the usual celebrity balderdash-who is doing what on pujas. From fashion models to the magician, the minister of Fire (in charge of the fire services department) to the artist, every one is there, saying they will do the pandal hopping or the ubiquitous adda with friends or eating out with family.
Adda as an institution may or may not be a Bengali discovery but many a great idea and minor nuisance has been born in those sessions of chatting, in a way which is far from gossip yet never too serious or boring. The French have a verb, bavarde, which comes close to adda. Whoever be the originators of adda it is apparent that Bengali celebrities and commoners alike indulge whole-heartedly in this pastime when the goddess is around. The rest of the year, even we get too busy.


The gripping Ghonada stories by the Bengali author Premendra Mitra were spun around this institution of adda. Stories in which the slightly older Ghonada held a group of young men (who shared a mess accommodation with him) enthralled, by relating stories of his adventures around the world. And with what drama he would begin those stories at those immortalised adda sessions. Thus the young mens’ adda in Mr Mitra’s magic pen would be transformed to an arena where good fought against evil, where Ghonada, the `teller of tall tales,’ spoke in little known African tongues with Dinka tribals, or fought with greedy double agents on Arctic freeze.

Talk of eating out at pujas one of my friends is planning to set up a stall for rolls near one of the big pujas of north Calcutta. While he will miss our addas and assorted diversions of puja days, he, like many others who do this, will make a neat little sum feeding the revellers. I plan to give him company by helping with his stall at least for an evening. Let’s see. He translated Chekov into Bengali recently and did quite a fine job. Another friend, a rising poet, suggested a new dish of snails and mushrooms which (if he gives me the recipe) one might try to prepare during the pujas, just for the fun of it.

The puja issues of the Bengali periodicals like Desh and Anadamela have been monopolised by the folks at home. So I have been surviving on Harper Lee. Sunil Ganguly is writing a short story in instalments in Ananda Bazar Patrika which I am reading. The next instalment is due today but my grandmother wants to read it first. Also planning to watch a movie with Shalini. But there’s some problem there. Her phone is not working and her mobile is always in the off mode. What is happening?

It seems the rain has become a bigger star than the Mother about to reach her home. Or is it just that the last few days before the pujas we consciously quieten our spirits and go about our work unassumingly just so that the sudden burst of joy and gaiety is all the more satisfying. From the time the dhaks begin to beat on the day of sasthi.
By the way many of my fellow Bengalis are going holidaying with their friends or families. As we like to do during the pujas. In fact Calcutta can be divided into those who would like to go travelling (near or far) during the pujas and leave the crowds and the noise and the gaiety behind them and those who would vouch for staying back in the city and enjoying the festivities. As you know we like to travel and are among the most visible tourists in this country. We slip away to the mountains or visit makbaras and mausoleums in far off cities at the slightest hint of a holiday. Thanks to the rains the puja holidays this year could be manipulated a bit-extended at the top or the bottom-let’s see!

One of the mobile service providers is offering dhak beats as caller tune. I am thinking of downloading one. Could the tune change to the plainitive and sad air on doshomi day when she leaves us again for a year leaving our hearts suddenly empty.

In my own way I did the soul-emptying nonchalant routine yesterday. As if nothing had happened or going to happen. As if Durga Puja is just another festival that will come and go with some noise here some colour there. I met a friend from Delhi who is a psychiatrist. He is helping me with the research for a novel I am trying to write. We ate croissants and ham sandwiches with orange juice at the new Flury’s. Not the laid-back old Flury’s of somnolent waiters and white tablecloth but the new American style house which my friend from Delhi however found laid back still. Then I tried to work a bit supervising the production of our journal but found that the printing press was without power.
No, power cuts are not back in Calcutta its just the rains. Just the rains. I inhale the rich smoky smell of the whisky, something strange is happening in my head. I smile to myself, I want to laugh aloud, something to do with my friend from Delhi? Will I miss her when she is gone after five days, am I drinking more frequently just because of that. To ignore her coming and going. To ignore the sudden surge of happiness that she brings for me. A dark hideous depression nails me down at night. I had gone to the blood river where they were fishing for barracudas, barracudas in the blood, the rain has begun again, blue and black rain, banishing firestorms blow across the face of this sandy city. Late very late I drift to a disturbed slumber.

The Sunday Statesman has published my travel piece. It makes me smile this morning.
P.S. Bad news: There are flood like situation in parts of West Bengal.

(©Copyright reserved by author. Published work.)

(Durga image courtesy http://www.londonpuja.com/)

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.

(©Copyright reserved by author. Published work.)

(Durga image courtesy Society for Confluence of Cultures)

The Inner Circle (Short Story)

Like every other morning Rumswaran trudged through the smelly bazaar humming with industrious Marwari housewives and brown meditating cows throwing the noisy traffic into disarray. He passed the party-office. The office was open - elections were near. Through the open windows of the single-storey box-like structure with the red and green flags fluttering aimlessly above the door, he again saw their faces.
He didn’t know them. But every time he walked past the office of this political party his gaze, for that fleeting moment, brushed their eyes. He knew they belonged to the inner circle.
Rumswaran moved on, his advancing age and polio-affected feet slowing his pace till he settled down in his garage corner. Customers were waiting. He gripped a shoe between his legs with practiced ease and as his awl danced around leather, his thoughts floated.

`Why the Big Man never gets his shoes mended?’ he thought.
He drew out a piece of leather from his soiled tool bag and began cutting it with a chisel. He offered the leather scraps to two street dogs watching him expectantly. A car drove recklessly past cladding Rumswaran and his canine companions in brown Calcutta dust.
`Those three, how could they make it to the inner circle?’ Rumswaran wondered with envious sarcasm. He had always wanted to be in their place, close to the party boss - the Big Man.
The dogs glowered at Rumswaran, while he dreamt standing someday at that door with the other three. Below the flags. People would look at him with awe and ask for favours. He will be close to the Big Man. Comfortable and powerful in his warm shadow.

Rumswaran believed he could make it happen. And then he will ride a car and won’t need to trudge on tired legs. He knew how. If the Big Man never comes to his shop he will carry them to him - the magic brogues!
For fourteen generations, the secret of the magic brogues had trickled through their line. He knew where to get the leather made from the rhino’s scrotum that is soft as the evening breeze but stronger than steel. He had learnt how to fashion the heels in the shape of the Bengal tiger’s paws so that when the Big Man stamps, the neighbourhood would tremble. In those magic shoes his confidence would soar, he would lead the people better; the Big Man would get bigger. Rumswaran would be invited to the inner circle that day…

As the June sun scrolled up higher against a papery sky there was a loud commotion outside. A big car screeched to a halt near the garage. Suddenly, hoarse screams rent the air.
Out jumped the Big Man from the car, panting and puffing. Rumswaran was lost for words. `At last!’ He rose to welcome him. But the Big Man, his face grotesque with terror, brushed past and hid behind a parked van. The blood-chilling yells followed. Rumswaran slowly emerged from his garage shop to investigate. The dogs ran away and watched from a distance.

His brain exploded, its white softness spraying the bonnet of the van. Rumswaran froze in his steps. He began to crumble, glassy-eyed among his cans of boot-polish. A second burst and a third. Return fire came from the back of the van. People watched, trembling behind drawn curtains. As the old cobbler lay among his leather waste and the singing city dust, the blood from his heart dripped and dripped slowly, making a circle of fire around the dead man. Like vermilion paste it smeared the battered footpath, getting thicker, darker and ever wider.

(Published work. Copyright reserved by author)

Fat (Short Story)

Hindol grew tired of roses. The big red Avons had begun to appear with such terrifying regularity, accompanied by flirtatious scribbles, in his wife Sulagna’s dresser or in the cavernous darkness of her vanity bag, that he had begun to dread. He now detested their scent and their brownish dusty remains that reminded him of crushed butterflies.

This was August. Their marriage was not even two summers old. Sulagna was an attractive woman with rouged cheeks rising smoothly on carefully sculpted cheekbones, a frame that could jack-up the bottomline of even less talented designers and eyes that played magic with kohl. They had been in love. Yet, days into their conjugal life his peace had begun to get sapped.

`What are those roses for?’ he asked her one day finding it difficult to carry on tolerating their appearance and persistence in their private space.

`Those are gifts from a friend.’

And a few difficult months went on like that when suddenly the roses transformed into women’s underwear. They popped up by the dozens in the wardrobe, dangling from the clotheshorse, in lace or some gauzy material, black, pink or in rainbow stripes. The Playboy rabbit was embossed on some while others were too tiny to dry a teardrop.

Hindol was flabbergasted; he knew she was not buying these. He secretly looked through her things for the roses, but they had vanished.

`Can I ask you something, Sulagna?’

`Shoot,’ she almost spat back, applying mascara with concentration.

`No, I mean, is it some new bloke, I mean all these…uh…garments…’

`You mean the undies,’ she fixed her stare on him, `why don’t you concentrate on your business and stop snooping.’

`What do you mean, I am married to you, I can get you packed off to the cooler for adultery!’ he was about to snap back, but he kept quiet. Many emotions crossed his mind. Sadness and hurt flooded him and their heaviness weighed him down before a mad rage began to hiss deep inside. But then there was a teardrop at the corner of his eye. He loved her still.

Yet the new man in his wife’s life did not stop courting her in his special way. And she remained nonchalant to his sorrow or that sudden teardrop.

Two months into their marriage, that was preceeded with a long (and lazy, complained Sulagna) courtship, she had started to show the first fault lines. Little cracks at first but soon it was a gift from a lover, carelessly left on the dresser, a hush, and a grey demon crouching between them at night. He knew he was losing her.

Hindol tried to concentrate on his food processing business, focusing on things like pickles and mayonnaise sauce, but it was not easy.

`Why don’t you two, take a holiday,’ a friend suggested but when Hindol mentioned this to Sulagna, she said,

`Why don’t you go with your friends,’ turned her back and continued a whispery phone conversation. He didn’t raise it again.

But now with the underwear-man stepping in, things were really going a bit too far for Hindol. First it was the sheer brazenness of the idea, the unabashed associations of the gifts and her lack of concern. Then there was the final ebbing away of her love and what it left behind - not wet sand, nor tired beaches but a scorching desert. It singed his pride, it mashed his ego to paste, it drove him mad.

He was trying to get some sleep that night and his wife had been late as usual. When it passed midnight he decided not to call her. For a new thought was keeping him awake…he will again have his soft wet sand, the dancing waves would be back, he would walk again, he and Sulagna, twirling around a fire, holding hands and together…

A week later, early in the morning as she was getting ready for office, he cat footed into the kitchen and carefully poured two tablespoons of an appetizer into her bowl of soup. Then he shook in some more black pepper and a little more salt to mask the smell of the medicine.

She sipped her soup thoughtfully, looked up at him for once and continued with her breakfast.

`Too much salt in this,’ she said suddenly, not expecting an answer. It was like that nowadays, when with him, she spoke to the wind.

Hindol did the cooking at home. `Maybe it’s the butter, they add too much salt in it these days,’ he merrily lied. Breakfast was over and after having checked her figure many times in the mirror (she was wearing a new pair of jeans) she was off. The day passed quietly.

Next morning she didn’t complain about the salt in her soup but took an extra helping of boiled potatoes with the rice. Hindol was pleased. At lunchtime she called him,

`You can be a bit more liberal with the cheese for my sandwiches.’

`Oh, I am so sorry, surely’

She hung up.

And a day later when her call came, again at lunchtime, `Is there no butter at home? I feel you are getting stingier by the day,’ to which Hindol mumbled an apology and agreed to take care.

A month went by.

They were buying cheese and butter by the kilos now and Hindol spent his culinary talents doing new things with cheese and rashers of ham, with mashed potatoes and sauce tartare. Some time later she developed an attachment for beer. That was also a trick of his and the secret doses of Periactin – the appetizer – in her diet worked extra miles with the beer around.

It did not take much longer for Hindol to find his plans beginning to work. The results took real shape before his eyes in the form of his happily ballooning wife. She slept longer and in his eyes she transformed to a lovable teddy bear. Her finely sculpted cheeks bloomed into plump juicy apples, her hips grew heavy, she had to get a new size of pants.

`Am I putting on weight, Hindol?’ she asked him one day, a dash of a concern in her voice.

`No, you look lovely mi-dear,’ he said lovingly. He didn’t mind; to him this was just a new avatar, a jumbo-size manifestation of a soul that he sometimes felt he loved more than his own, `you seem to be charged with life,’ he gurgled and the secretly administered regimen of appetizer continued.

Hindol was looking forward to much more. He hoped those results will be trickling in soon and with it his stolen happiness will be returned him. `All those half-wits she goes around with, I know what you are after,’ he had told himself, `just let me make her a bit ugly to your eyes, you blinkered packhorses and let me see you fly.’

`It seems I am winning,’ he congratulated himself, soon, when the lingerie gifts had stopped coming. There were hiccups though like when months later, guiltily rummaging through her wardrobe, he discovered a new and expensive lycra bikini top with the slogan `You catch my imagination’ blazing across the bust.

`Ouch! the blighter, is back,’ Hindol whispered to himself in despair. But neither underwear-man nor rose-man ever really returned. Soon there was one unbroken month of quiet happiness for him and his 14 stone darling. The Periactin had been at work for more than a year.

A sunny autumn arrived. The city was getting ready to celebrate the biggest of its annual festivals – Durga Puja. There had been no sign of her suitors for months and he was turning over a thought in his mind - should he ask her for a holiday? And it was also high time he started using some advice of Dr Atkins. The ideas of the slim diet guru were an assurance, though not entirely necessary, `I am not like underwear-man or rose-man,’ he chided himself. He coughed, straightened an imaginary crease of his pyjama-top, a sweet October breeze brought the scent of far off flowers to the lost lovers,

`Darling, perhaps we can go on a holiday this Puja. There’s this nice beach resort in the South…it has been such a long time.’

Sulagna smiled and her plump face looked puffier. He thought there was suddenly a flash of guilt across that face, but she didn’t look into his eyes as she spoke,

`Hindol, I had to tell you this, I was just not sure how and when. It didn’t work out for us…I am leaving you,’ she halted, waddled to the edge of the verandah and her face was hidden in a shadow now, `his name is Patrick, he is the Asian weightlifting champion, gold medal, 1999; he says he can’t take his eyes off me. We have been seeing each other for a year. I thought you had guessed. Anyway…thank you for the beer and that extra salt.’

(All rights reserved by author. First published in Sulekha)