The spirit of Pujo

It's alive and well; and prospering outside the confines of Calcutta as well

Growing up in Calcutta meant that Pujo was a very special time — even for a true-blue Punjabi family like mine. Yes, my mother sowed a pot with khetri (wheat germ) and we had special pujas every evening in the Navratras and performed Kanjak puja on Ashtami like all devout Punjabis. But we also celebrated the Bengali-style Pujo with equal fervour. As a child I particularly enjoyed getting four sets of new clothes to go pandal-hopping on Shashti, Saptami, Ashtami and Nabami, eating the bhog at different pujos to get a true measure of the culinary delights on offer. 

And then, fate decreed that I had to leave Calcutta and come live and work in Delhi. For many years after I moved, I couldn’t bring myself to celebrate Pujo the same way as I did in Cal. Yes, I knew that there was a sizeable Bengali community in Delhi which celebrated the festival with zest and fervour. But somehow I couldn’t see myself joining the festivities I always associated with Kolkata in a small corner of Delhi that is always Bengal (Chittaranjan Park, of course). So I would content myself with ruminating on Pujas past and promising myself that next year — for sure! — I would go back to Cal for the festival. 

It took me several years to come to the realisation that that was not going to happen. So I did the next best thing. I began attending the Pujos in my immediate neighbourhood in Delhi. These were smaller, more intimate affairs, with many familiar faces, and a genuine sense of community. And I felt that familiar Pujo spirit return to refresh my mind and soul. I soon grew emboldened enough to venture further and attend the larger, more famous Pujos in the capital. And before I knew it, this became an annual ritual. 

This year was different, though. The day the festivities began I was due to travel to Jaipur to attend an event — and who in Rajasthan would be celebrating the Pujos? 

Well, it turned out that a lot of people would be doing just that! As I discovered, there are many as 15 Pujo pandals in Jaipur (reminding me of that old joke: What do you get when three Bengalis get together? Two Pujo Committees!) even though the Bengali community in the city is far from large. 

So it was that on Mahasaptami I managed to recreate my Calcutta memories. I put on a new outfit and headed out with my husband to visit Jaipur’s oldest Durga Pujo pandal in Bani Park. And strangely enough, it was this Pujo that most closely mirrored the Pujos I remembered from my childhood. The pandal was small and compact, the Durga idol was beautiful and serene but not overstylised, the bhog was a simple khichri and tarkari, and the place was overrun by the same kind of Bengali aunties and uncles who used to spoil me when I was a kid. 

Perhaps that explains why, as I stood there, saying a silent prayer to the Goddess, I felt myself retreat to a child-like state of wonder. Or maybe it was just the Devi blessing me with a few moments of grace. 

I would like to think that it was a little bit of both. 

Eat, Pray, Love

Let's mark Diwali as a Festival of Lights, not a Celebration of Excess

My childhood memories of Diwali revolve around (no, not shopping, crackers or mithai) cleaning. Yes, you read that right: cleaning. As a child I rapidly came to recognize that the first sign that the Festival of Lights was around the corner was that industrial-scale cleaning would commence in the Goswami household.

Entire rooms would be cleared out so that they could be washed and swabbed and swept until the floor was clean enough to eat off. The 'special crockery' that lived in the cupboard all year long, and was never used for fear of breakage, would be brought out ceremonially to be given a good scrubbing before it went right back on the shelves. The silver would be polished, the bronze given a good seeing-to. And all the Gods and Goddesses that presided over the Puja room would be ritually bathed and clad in brand-new clothes.

All of this was, of course, a communal activity, with the entire household pitching in to do their bit. Even the kids who were too young to be of much help would be handed a dusting cloth and sent forth to do their best.

I know it doesn't sound like it, but it was enormous fun. So much so that even now, when the weather starts to change and the air begins to hint at Diwali, my thoughts go back to my childhood home in Calcutta and our annual Diwali clean-out. I flash back to the vision of all the household furniture piled up high in the verandah to be given a little lick and polish, while the rooms were flushed of the dust accumulated in corners over the year. Which perhaps explains why to this day, to me, nothing says Diwali like the smell of soap-suds and bleach.

Growing up, it was made abundantly clear to me that it was only after the house was squeaky clean -- and sparkling enough to pass inspection by Ma Lakshmi -- that the task of celebrating Diwali could begin.

Of course, it was a different Diwali in those days. For one thing, communities were more integrated, and not only did we know the names of all our neighbors, we also thought nothing of dropping in on them unannounced. In fact, we weren't just in and out of each other's houses, anybody who was around at mealtimes would be asked to tuck in as well (and even expected to help clear up!).

Not surprisingly, Diwali also used to be a more communal (in the positive sense) affair. Kids would pool their resources to buy crackers and then get together in the evening to set them off while the entire neighborhood watched. Card games were more laid-back, with low stakes so that nobody could lose a fortune no matter how hard they tried. And it was enough to take a box of mithai to the neighbors to wish them Happy Diwali; you didn't need to put together an extravagant hamper full of luxury chocolates, wine, whiskey or cheese.

But as you may have noticed, things are very different these days. Instead of a home-style festival focused on family, friends and feasting, Diwali has been turned into a celebration of conspicuous consumption.

On Dhanteras it is not enough to buy something useful for the kitchen. No, the ads tell us that it is imperative to splash out on some gold. It is not enough to just buy one new outfit for the Diwali day itself. No, you must invest in a whole new wardrobe so that you never repeat a dress as you make the rounds of the endless 'card parties' that precede Diwali. It is not enough to just light up the house with diyas on the day of Diwali. No, you must get garish lights hung on the facade of your house for weeks on end to properly get into the 'festive spirit'.

Well, even though I have made my peace with the modern, more mercenary Diwali, sending out and receiving hampers with the best of them (keeping up with the Junejas, as I like to call it) there are times when I find myself longing to go back to a simpler time. A time when Diwali was truly a Festival of Lights not a Celebration of Excess. A time when we worshipped the Goddess of wealth instead of just spreading our wealth around.

So this year round, I made a resolution. I would try my best to recreate the spirit of the Diwalis of my childhood and teenage years. Here's a tiny little sampler of how I went about it.

* No to electric lights. Yes to earthen oil-filled diyas with homemade cotton wicks. (If that seems much too fiddly to you, go with beeswax candles.)

* No to heavy-duty hampers that take in everything from macaroons to Darjeeling tea to premium champagne. Yes to eco-friendly gifts like potted plants which will flourish and grow rather than be consumed and forgotten.

* No to splurging on household goods that I don't need (and scarcely have the space for). Yes to taking a collection of goodies and presents to the local orphanage and seeing the kids' eyes light up.

And, on the cheerful note, here's wishing all of you a very Happy Diwali. Stay blessed.

It's that time of year again...

When the sweet smell of Pujo is in the air

When the mornings turn a tad cooler, the shiuli starts flowering, and evenings begin to set in earlier every day, my thoughts inevitably turn to the city of my birth. Even though I haven’t lived in Calcutta (sorry, it’s always going to be Calcutta, or even Cal, to me; unless I am speaking Bangla, in which case it is always Kolkata) for two decades, there’s something about early October that always transports me back there, as the memories of Pujos past (that’s Durga Puja to all you non-Bongs/non-Calcuttans out there) bubble up to the surface.

Even as a child, I knew instinctively that there was something special about Pujo. It wasn’t just that our household, holding on tight to our Punjabi roots, celebrated the Navratras by planting ‘Khetri’ (wheat) in a terracotta pot in the puja room, feeding ‘kanjakas’ (young girls who are believed the symbolize the Goddess Durga) on Ashtami, the eighth day of the nine-day period of Navratra, and fasting during this period. It was also that something shifted in the air of the city itself, making it seem more festive, more celebratory, and more excited (and excitable).

The first hint that something was up was evident from the roads, jammed with people heading out for their Pujo shopping, making the traffic even more insane than usual. Next, activity started in the communal maidan near our house, where a pandal seemed to spring up almost overnight. And then, one day, all of us kids would be roused at 4 am to listen to the Mahalaya broadcast on All India Radio, which signaled the beginning of the festivities.

Our household, for its part, turned schizophrenic during this period. Till Ashtami, we were Punjabis, tending our ‘Khetri’ faithfully, staying away from onions and garlic, and eating ‘fast’ food once a day. And then, having broken our fast on Ashtami with our puri-halwa and kala chana, we mutated effortlessly into Bengalis, doing the rounds of the pandals on Mahanabami and Vijayadashami, marveling at the decorations, the lights, gorging on the street food stalls doing business near the pandals, having ‘bhog’, and watching goggle-eyed as the ladies of the neighbourhood performed the ‘Dhunachi nritya’ to the beats of the Dhak, in front of the Goddess on Dashami.

But while we were a religious family, performing all the rituals and reciting all the mantras taught to us by our grandparents, it wasn’t hard to figure out, even as a child, that Pujo in Calcutta transcended religion. It was as much about faith as it was about fun. It was as much about community as it was about culture. It was as much about prayer as it was about partying.

For me, though, one of the best bits about Pujo was that we got new clothes: a set each for the five days of the festival (beginning with Shashthi and ending with Dashami), so that we never had to repeat an outfit when we went pandal-hopping. That meant endless trips to New Market, many excursions to the local tailor, and a mandatory visit to the Bata store on Chowringhee before my Pujo wardrobe was complete.

It was during Pujo that I tried out my first pair of high heels as a teenager (suffice it to say that it did not go well!). It was during Pujo that I first discovered the joys of flirting, safe within the embrace of my giggly girl gang. It was during Pujo that I attended my first Rabindrasangeet recital (and was blown away by the how much better Tagore sounded in the Bengali original than in all the banal English translations I had read until now). And it was during Pujo that I attended my first music concert (Bappi Lahiri was the star performer, accompanied by his gold jewellery, but thankfully even that was not enough to turn me off live performances for life).

Even after I grew up and began working as a journalist, my inner child would emerge triumphantly every time the Goddess paid a visit to her mother’s place. It helped that the newspaper house I worked for, in true-blue Bengali style, would give everyone four days off for Pujo, so that we could go pandal-hopping at leisure, stay up at late-night addas with our friends, gorge on luchi-dal for breakfast and dine on the most scrumptious of biryanis.

And then, one day, I moved out of Cal and was left with only memories of Pujos past to sustain me over the Navratri period. Which is why for me October always comes with sepia-tinted images of Pujo festivities in Calcutta playing in a constant loop in my head.

There is something special about Pujo in Calcutta. No matter how hard the Bengali community in Chittaranjan Park tries to recreate the ambience of Durga Puja in Delhi, it never quite feels like the real thing. I don’t quite know how to explain it, but I can tell the difference whenever I stop by to get my fill of the Pujo spirit. The pandals are just as beautiful, the Goddess looks as amazing, the beat of the Dhak sounds as powerful, the bhog is just as delicious. And yet, there’s something missing.

And that certain something is Calcutta. The city metamorphoses into a magical place when the Goddess comes calling.

So, all of you celebrating in Cal, remember to have an extra rossogolla for those of us exiled from the City of Joy, and forced to observe the festivities from afar. And a very Happy Pujo to all!