Sheer Melody

A mole's eye-view of the Cosmos


Yet another Pujo...

Yet another Pujo… And yet again, I am not in Kolkata. What’s it about Durga Pujo (and not Puja), which makes all Bengalis pine for their hometown?

Some things are unfathomable, and are best left at that. CNN-IBN ran a report on Durga Pujo, explaining how it’s the season of romance in Kolkata (and most of Bengal, for that matter), but is it just that? Or is it something more than couples meeting on the sly and promising each other a lifetime of love, caring and passion?

This is one particular question I endeavor to answer every Pujo, as autumn sets in and I realize that the festival that means the most to me isn’t powerful enough to make materialism take a back-seat. As I prepare to leave office early and go home, and try to make the most of a season meant for unplanned adda, fun and frolic; there are a million things that will go through my mind, and not all of them are about Pujo…

Durga Pujo and Kolkata are inextricably linked together. As the rest of the country tows the line which Rajiv Gandhi said several years ago on the city – A City on its death-bed – I wonder what it is about the city which invokes such warm and fuzzy feelings in me. And as I will take the auto and go back to an empty house, and sit back with a drink, recollections will flood my mind – some pleasant, some traumatic and some just plain romantic. Recollections of a lost childhood – recollections of times spent with lost friends, of a time when the pleasure was not in the conclusion but in the journey. As someone said about travel – it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. Durga Pujo is such a festival… There is no destination. There is a journey, a journey through a four-day long extravaganza of joy, gaiety, song, dance and unbridled romance. Durga Pujo is all of this and much more, and like all good things, most of it is not quantifiable.

We have four more shows to get through, and while I hope the response will be amazing – I look forward to at least making the most of a Pujo far from home, with what I like doing the best – music…