Puja and the City

Come September, and Kolkata begins to wear a new look.  The rains are over, the days maybe still warm, but the evenings have cooled down, and Kolkata is getting ready for the biggest festival of the year, Durga Puja.  Durga Puja is indeed the most colourful, boisterous, joyous and extraordinary festival the city can hold.  It has often been compared to carnivals, but it is much beyond what a carnival can ever aspire to be.  It is not just about the worship of Goddess Durga, it is much more than that.  It is an amalgam of the spiritual and the aesthetic, the social and the cultural.  It is an incredible feat that brings together the numerous and diverse elements of art and crafts, design and architecture, construction, illumination and pyrotechnics, planning and management, and finance, all together, under one roof, one pandal. 

Durga Puja overtly is the worship of Goddess Durga, welcoming her back to her father’s house, where she has come to visit for 4 days, with her four children: Lakshmi, Sarawati, Kartik and Ganesh.  Durga Puja is certainly the celebration of good over evil, where Goddess Durga slays the evil Mahishasura.  And Durga Puja, Sharadotsav, or a celebration of autumn, is obviously about offering prayers, and incantations by priests, and invoking the deity for deliverance from sorrow and evil.  But that is just one aspect of Durga Puja in the city of Kolkata.  Durga Puja has a much wider meaning, a much larger scope, for in organizing even one puja, it takes a tremendous amount of organizational skills, from collecting the ‘chanda’ or donations months before, to allocating the funds; to co-ordinating with the creative team regarding the design and the art work, and working with the construction workers in getting the pandal ready; and then to finally getting the Puja going, with the priests, the Prasad and bhog, and the crowd management.  Indeed, if arranging for Durga Puja could have been a profit making activity, all the MBA schools in India would have offered a degree in Puja Management.

Durga Puja, like all other socio-religious celebrations, itself may not be a profit making institution, but it is an industry that gives employment to thousands.  Other than the direct employment that it generates, Durga Pujas also give rise to a frenzy of economics not directly related.  Months before, clothes and jewellery traders start hawking their wares in special sales and exhibitions, coming up with ‘pujo special’ designs.  Singers, musicians, theatre artists, cinemas, magazines all promote their ‘pujo special’ or ‘sharad shankhya’ releases.  Eateries pop up, and the already established ones expand their business, catering to the day-by-day increasing throngs of Kolkata.  Dhakis, or the drum beaters, start assembling from all parts of Bengal, and you can hear their rhythmic beats as they begin their pujo welcome.  Special trains and buses are scheduled, and the metro runs beyond its regular hours.  Office goers now happily spend their ‘pujo bonuses’.  The streets begin to don a festive look as pujo decorations appear all over.  Schools and colleges, and even offices close down.  Indeed, it is joyous time to be in Kolkata, both for business folks, as well as for the consumers.

But, above all the things that it is, Durga Puja is an outburst of visual delight.  The Durga and the other deity images are works of art, and so are the pandals.  It takes months of planning to design and finally create these exquisite pieces of art that are to last a mere five days.  Artists and designers collaborate to come up with themes, and each year it is a different theme.  There are more than 150 major Durga Puja pandals in Kolkata, not to mention the countless smaller ones.  There are prizes at stake, so the competition is fierce.  This year, like every other year, the themes are varied: some pandals promise to be green and eco-friendly, using only bamboo for construction and solar panels for electricity.  Science is another popular theme, and Durga and science be synthesized, not just spiritually uplifting the devotees, but letting them witness the wonders of science.  The designers and creators of one pandal promise to use refraction of light through colourful bamboos to create a luminous wonder.  

Another pujo committee is planning to use abstract art to usher in Ma Durga.  So, along with the pushpanjali, the devotee can ponder about creation, the artist’s interpretation of origin of life in artwork that is created out of nylon.  While one pandal is a cultural eruption of Rajasthan, so Devi Durga, in Kolkata, is to be worshipped in a desert setting; another will depict the puja in Pipli, a village of Orissa; and both the pandals will be working with the handicrafts and art of the respective places.  One committee that wants to promote social awareness is focusing on the ‘stree shakti’ or the power of womanhood, indeed a pertinent theme, given that Goddess Durga represents that power.  Another historically committed Puja organizers team is going to present the history of printing and publishing in Bengal, so a trip to this pandal will also be an educational trip.  The themes are as creative as they are endless.  There is one that will show Durga and her entourage in a dream and fantasy land, and there have been pujas where Ma Durga has even teamed with dinosaurs.

Whatever the theme, whatever the budget, the end product of Durga Pujo is a treat for the senses.  So, while one looks at the pandals and murtis, listens to the dhaaks, inhales the intoxicating smell of shiuli flowers in the morning and dhunuchis in the evenings, and endlessly eats, one is also aware that this is the best time to meet old friends and family.  So folks gather and visit, and stay up all night ‘pandal hopping’, admiring the different pandals and murtis looking their best all lit up.  And, very soon, the four days are over, and it is time for Bijoya, or bidding goodbye to Ma Durga.  Indeed a sorrowful time, for the festival is over.  But, everyone in Kolkata is looking forward to the next puja.  The planning has already begun.