Durga Puja Is an Emotion for us!

I write this article sitting at my Editorial desk on Panchmi, amid the Durga Puja virtual vibe. The Mumbai sky seems a little different today; it evokes a tinge of whitish rays against the light blue background, every time I looked up today. I do not know if the Mumbai sky changes its colour, and bears a sign of elation, as it happens in Kolkata; but for sure it did stir me. This marks the 7th consecutive year of me being absent from Kolkata during Durga Puja. But, not once there has been an occasion when I didn’t recall my childhood days.

I guess more than anything else, Durga Puja was like a shelter to us where we were at liberty to eat all the junk food in the world, bid goodbye to our books and notebooks, and voluntarily take up the responsibility of our local Puja pandal. So basically you had to choose what time the idol is coming, what height should it be, what colour, and the like. You also had to decide on what kind of music must be played at what hour, contact the decorators (normally the boys of the group would take care of this) and constantly be in sync with the elderly. A significant responsibility also included keeping a tab on what the nearby pandals were up to, and under no circumstances could they be allowed to be ahead of us.

The late evenings and early mornings mostly included hanging around the pandal, and the afternoons used to be reserved for nearby pandal visits, or a trip around the city. Those days none of us used to health-conscious, we would dive deep into delicacies like Egg rolls, Phuchkas, Chicken rolls, Fish fries, Mughlai, Chinese, and lots more. Ashtami was normally vegetarian in Bengali households, but I recollect multiple occasions when I literally hogged onto delicious plates of Mutton Biriyani and Chicken Chaaps. And Dusseras meant visiting relatives houses and getting yourself treated to different categories of sweets and delicacies, in exchange for a few greetings!

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I guess more than anything else, Durga Puja gave us an option to reunite. A reunion among friends, families, relatives and also befriending a whole lot of new faces. Some of which materialised into capable relationships. Durga Puja was and would continue to be one such occasion where love was spread far and wide, and create gigantic repercussions. A repercussion that I can strongly feel sitting here in Mumbai and the same that helped me pen this article!