One of my initial posts had something that I had to say about Durga Puja and how I missed it then. This Pujo (as we “Bongs” prefer calling it) I, thankfully, don’t have to mourn thus!!!! I am all here in Kolkata raving to enjoy every moment of the festival that so precisely describes the Bengali fervor
Pujo is much more than a mere festival to Bengalis( I remember reading a Vir Sanghvi article in which he defines a Bengali as one who’s ever had anything to do with Bengal)….But then each festival is special to one who celebrates it! So let me put what I personally feel about Pujo instead of a generic description of it……
I have been more of a cosmopolitan for most of my life. I would probably have spent only a handful number of Pujos in Kolkata….but even that memory is flabbergasting!! Be it the frenzy that drives people (count me among those too, readers) as if this is the first time they’ve been to a store since lightening struck all their clothes or the suffocating crowd that rushes before the pandals(read: designed arenas where the idol is worshipped…..actually it’s a lot more than I can describe) …….the Pujos have it all. It is perhaps the only festival that satiates the hysteria we Bengalis are so infamously famous for!!
I feel Pujo in the mellow fragrance of Autumn winds, in the blue of the sheath above, in the smell of new clothes, in the rumbling of the dhhak( read: Bengali version of drum) around in the anticipation of the Bengali heart within....I feel Pujo everywhere….
