Been a few days since the euphoria around the biggest Bong fest came to an end for this year. I know being in Kolkata, there should have been a post on Durga Puja sooner, well here it is, a little late.
In the three years that we are in Kolkata, this is the first time we actually went out to see and enjoy the occasion. In this city, every nook and corner, every road, each by lane probably has a sarbojonin pujo shomiti ready with their agenda and theme of pujo' (henceforth I will continue using pujo instead of puja...gives it that flavour u know!). Sarbojonin pujo, for the uninitiated, is a 'democratic' pujo, of the people by the people. Everyone in the vicinity puts in a donation amount (by will or by force, democracy, remember?) known as chanda and that fund is used to perform the rituals and other important activities. A shomiti is a committee, so it's a "Democratic Pujo Committee", that heads all the activities related to that particular pujo.
I have a lurking belief that these 'other important activities' have come to the forefront and pujo just an excuse. But then these 'other important activities' are mostly fun - cultural programs by the locals including music, dance and plays, sometimes popular artists are invited to perform. Various competitions are held among the local residents, in tune with the occasion, like conch sounding, alpona or rangoli, dhunuchi dance (long stemmed earthenware with embers of coconut husk sprinkled with incense creating a smokey atmosphere), cooking, some places have food stalls put up by the locals, .
We, along with a few friends, started our journey around 12:30 am, just after midnight. My baby deep in sleep, with his new dress on and his "shobuj joto" - green shoes in my bag. Just in case he decided to wake up and wanted to walk - good that we packed his shoes, because that soon happened!
At the first pandal we walked right inside a sea. The entrance was through a corridor lined with waves, various schools of fish and sea weeds on both sides. As we entered we were greeted by the sound of the waves - clever play on the second sense to take the viewer to the desired location! There were visible waves too created using plastic tea cup stacks. These transparent objects in bunches were very creatively used to depict the curly, foamy waves. The beach was complete with litter strewn on one side and a sand sculpture of the goddess' face on the other.
The next place we went had a preachy theme - conserve earth, reduce, reuse, recycle. They too had a lot of plastic figurines made of cellophane and other plastic materials. It was around 2 am then and suddenly hubs spotted tiny eyes looking curiously at things around. He was up and soon realized he was still out which made him immensely happy. But he refused to walk so had to carry him around for the rest of the places.
Then we saw one pujo pandal themed as a tribute to the yesteryear actress, Suchitra Sen. The walls adorned posters of her famous movies, dialogues and her pictures. Another pandal was a creative description of death, with red and white all over the place along with disfigured dolls of the gods hanging all around, the pandal was kind of creepy. Yet another had a Chinese inspired decor, even the idol had a lot more hands than the regular ten - probably even she couldn't rely on the Chinese hands/goods and wanted some backup!
When we reached the Chinese pandal it would have been around 3 am and we had to push through a crowd to see the pujo and were not allowed to stand there and see the idol properly. People ARE a crazy lot here!
Around 4 am my little one decided to call it a day and was sound asleep. We tugged on for a couple of more hours before heading back home.
Pandal hopping was an exciting experience and to see the dawn break while stuck at a traffic jam, priceless!
Pics courtesy a dear friend.