Puja aa gayi! The Puja is here! You can feel the sense of anticipation in the air, the excitement and every conversation with every person right from the community health worker, the mother at the community meeting, the taxi driver to the neighbors, and the man at the Vodafone store asks us all- “Will you be in Kolkata for Puja?”
On each of my field visits prior to Puja I had conversations with the health workers at Calcutta Kids. They each ask me- “Puja ke kapde ho gaye?” (Have you bought new clothes for Puja?). During our visits, many doors to houses are locked as the people have gone to buy their Puja clothes. Stepping out after a house visit, I see a crowd of people and find that the man selling shirt materials is here! Everyone is preparing to look their best and find clothes for Puja. For some, like the one health worker I spoke to, she said she’d rather put her money into buying a new cupboard for the house than a new saree. However, her children of course get new clothes, one for each day of Puja. They asked me in the office, “What will you wear-saree or salwar?” “It is so crazy, but so much fun!” they said while trying to explain how there are numerous food stalls on the street, metro runs at later hours and people spend all night outside at the pandals. Another health worker told me that the Puja was so exciting because it did not matter what religion you came from, how old you were, how much you were going to spend or how you wished to celebrate Puja, as it was a time of celebration for everyone.
Traffic was starting to get worse. There was less room to breathe on the metro. Buses had to move very slowly through the markets filled with people trying to get the best price on their new saree, utensils, or home goods. Even the narrowest street had to make room for a mesh of tall bamboo sticks that would soon be turned into a beautiful pandal. Stores everywhere boasted of Puja offers and sales. There was no way to escape, as you had to succumb to the Puja shopping and buy bangles, bindis, dupattas and salwars (I settled for salwars as with the pep talks I was getting about the crowds on the street, I didn’t think I could handle a saree along with trying not to get lost). Everyday the pandals made a little progress, making me more curious about how the end product would turn out.
As devoted members of About.com, Pranav, my fellow Fellow at Calcutta kids, and I made our way to Kumartuli, the potter’s locality, to see the Durga idols being prepared. In little shops on either side of a narrow road there were rows of idols at various stages of completion. In some shops we saw them still at the stage of straw figures, while in others they had already been dressed. Some were in between, covered in clay and waiting for the painting to begin. We saw Durga idols, 2 feet tall to about 10 feet tall. It was exciting to learn that idols from here were sent across the world where the Bengali diaspora came together to celebrate Durga Puja
Mahalaya, celebrated seven days before Durga Puja, signifies the arrival of Goddess Durga. It is the beginning of festive celebrations and the last push to complete preparing the idols and pandals. We were told that traditionally, the eyes of the goddess were painted on this day. Pandals started to look more ready by the end of the week as the lights on the streets were up and the bamboo sticks were covered with colorful cloth. I felt thrilled on my way home from work, as I saw big idols being carried on trucks to their pandals. Numerous tube lights of varied colors aligned the streets. Bamboo sticks were put up on the side of roads as additional walking tracks. Advertisement posters plastered the sides of roads selling to you all that you need in the name of Puja. Twenty-three x-ray scanners had been installed at various metro stations across the city. I was impressed by how the city was preparing to receive the anticipated crowds. To celebrate the festive season, on the last day in the office, due to popular demand from the health workers, we had an egg roll party! Everyone contributed to the party with food, sweets and soda. Lights were put up in the office and loud music and drumming from the streets contributed to a drive to get up and dance instead of work in the office. We wished each other Shubho Pujo and left for the weekend oblivious to the mad carnival we would be subjected to in the next few days.
Why is Durga Puja so big in Bengal? What brings so many people into the city every year? Why do people feel the need to spend on this holiday compared to all other national holidays? Learning about the history of Durga Puja answered some of the questions running through my mind. My research offered me an explanation for the chaotic celebrations that took over the city. Mythologically, Durga Puja is considered a time to honor the mother goddess Durga and celebrate womanhood. The gods in heaven were distraught with the powerful demon King Mahishasur, who was creating havoc on earth after being given the power to not be defeated by any male. The gods decided to create an all-powerful female to kill the demon king and at that very moment a stream of lightning from the mouths of the supreme beings Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva turned into a beautiful, magnificent woman with ten hands. All the gods furnished her with special weapons and she rode her lion to battle the demon Mahishasur whom she destroyed. The image of Durga, the Eternal Mother destroying the demon is also said to be symbolic of strength, independence, and power, the final confrontation of the spiritual urge of man with baser passions and the triumph of good over evil. 
Interestingly enough, despite the traditional Hindu importance of the story, Durga Puja gained mass popularity as a result of colonial influences. The Hindu Upper class of Bengal devised the celebration of Durga Puja as a means to create a space in the British administrative machinery when the previously imposed festival tax on Hindus was abolished under Governor General Warren Hastings’ regime. Nothing unites Indians like the power of a festive holiday and so the festival continued to gain popularity as it was also an easy route for Bengali zamindars to get major tax reliefs and manage extra allowances of the British. Thus Durga, who only had few mentions in literary, archeological and ancient documents before the 18th century became a glorious celebration that has spread across India and even across the world through the Bengali diaspora. The middle class took control of the community Puja celebrations to further their commercial pursuits. Additionally, the Puja continues to transform as it responds to the “demands of modernity”. The festival is now re-packaged as a popular means to draw tourists every year. Corporate sponsorships at every pandal, coveted awards such as “Most environment friendly” to “Excellence awards to best decorate Puja Pandal” displayed outside the pandalsand innumerable products to promote consumerism and stronger budgets to encourage innovative themes mesmerize the middle class and thousands of families flocking to the city.
The weekend started slow with the arrival of many fellow Fellows from different parts of North India. It was exciting to have houseguests just like the rest of the neighbors in the building who were busy entertaining for Puja. We wasted no time in setting out on our very first adventure of pandal-hopping. People were dressed up in extremely fancy clothes, women looked very happy in their shiny sarees but their children did not look pleased to be in very uncomfortable yet pretty looking Indian wear. Food stalls were all around with mountains of muri and fully stocked with eggs for rolls. There were people selling bubbles, whistles, hats, light up bracelets, and many more things you did not need but surely wanted. Over the next few days we continued to do some intense “pandal-ing” (credit to Andrew who coined the term) amongst our group of 9 fellows who braved through the crowds on foot in search of the most interesting idols. We spent hours walking; not thinking about how we could be facing a stampede at any moment, and google maps became our best friend. The city that we have all grown fond of over the last month here transformed from the Calcutta we knew to Durga Puja land. We saw pandals that were modeled on the Johannesburg stadium of South Africa, Vivekandanda rock of Kanyakumari, and the Laxminarayan temple of Vellore.
The enormous crowd engulfed us wherever we went. The dark side of it all was the numerous fights I saw between men on the street, many a time broken up by the supplemental police force that was on duty in the city. The fights seemed to stem from a combination of exhaustion, frustration and a heightened sense of male ego that came with wanting to provide a good time to their family while ironically celebrating the goddess who dominated the male ego itself. We came home exhausted, dehydrated, with our feet covered in blisters and having possible cases of photophobia and partial deafness.
Our senses were overloaded with sounds of drums, traffic, music, screaming, and women ululating making our ears ring; smells of stir fried chowmein, biriyani, incense sticks, the taste of kathi rolls, lassi, momos, and sights of the famous Chandannagar lights making us dizzy. We were determined to experience every aspect of the Puja ethos and so also had some traditional Bengali food at restaurants suggested by co-workers and experienced Puja in true- Bengali family- fashion. The last thing on the list was seeing Visarjan to bid goodbye to Durga Ma, I unfortunately threw out my back and could not make it to the ghats of the Hooghly. However, I bid goodbye to all the pandals around our apartments as I saw them making their way to the river on trucks. The next day at work everyone wished each other for Biyoja Dashami and came to work in their new Puja clothes.
After a storm comes a calm and that is exactly how our house, how work, our commute and the city has been post Puja. Our guests left to go back to their respective places, many people at work are still on holiday and the metro has been so empty that I had a choice of places to sit! You can see that there are considerably less people in the city and most shops and businesses are still closed. People seem to be staying in their houses, reflecting or recovering from Puja after having bid Durga Ma goodbye and thinking ‘Asche bochor abar hobe’ (meaning ‘it will happen again next year’).
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“Durga Puja: A Colonial Hindu Festival That Took Over India.” International Business Times. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2012. <http://www.ibtimes.com/durga-puja-colonial-hindu-festival-took-over-india-851909>.
“Sridhar Das.” Sridhar Das. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2012. <http://www.chandannagar.com/htmlfiles/sd.htm>.
“Goddess Durga.” About.com Hinduism. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2012. <http://hinduism.about.com/od/hindugoddesses/a/durga.htm>.
“Hindu Inspiration.” : Durga Puja: A Colonial Hindu Festival That Took Over India. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2012. <http://hinduinspiration.blogspot.in/2012/10/durga-puja-colonial-hindu-festival-that.html>.
“Kolkata’s Changing Puja Ethos.” Ghosal, Chandikaprosad. Economic and Political Weekly 18 Nov. 2006: n. pag. JSTOR. Web. 27 Oct. 2012. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4418911>.
