[For the uninitiated,
Durga Puja, or Pujo as we Bengalis pronounce it, is the Bengali-Hindu
equivalent of Christmas. According to lore, the Goddess Durga spends the whole
year caring for her husband, Lord Shiva, in the Himalayas. But for four golden
days in autumn, she returns to her parents' house, accompanied by her children,
an occasion that mortals celebrate with pomp and pageantry. The essence of the
festivities thus lies in coming home and being with all those whom one loves.]
By Arnab Ray
 |
Courtesy of Sara Ray
An idol display at Singhi Park in Kolkata, West Bengal in this Oct. 19, 2012 photo |
COLLEGE PARK, Maryland -- It's October, the season of Durga Puja (Puja being Sanskrit for
worship), the most important religious festival for Bengali-Hindus.
As a
Non-Resident-Indian- first-generation-Bengali-settled-in-the-United States, I
have a standard operating procedure for this time of the year. I go online,
find out the venues (usually schools) and the dates (usually weekends) of each
of the local Durga Pujos. I then use a complex algorithm, one that factors in
inputs like the distance of the venue from my house and the entry-fee, to
settle on a destination. Then my wife states her preference and that is where
we end up going.
I take my traditional
Bengali kurta-pyjama out from the suitcase, fire up the GPS, arrive at the
venue, sit around for some time making small talk with my wife and overhearing
scraps of conversations about mortgage rates, while keeping a standard-issue
smile plastered to my face, trying to avoid the jolly-faced lady floating about
in a friendly way trying to sell "latest-design" saris from India. I
have my food, snigger at the cultural programs and finally drive back home,
promising myself that this is the last time I will go to one of these events.
It's a resolve I maintain until the next October comes around.
For the uninitiated,
Durga Puja, or Pujo as we Bengalis pronounce it, is the Bengali-Hindu
equivalent of Christmas. According to lore, the Goddess Durga spends the whole
year caring for her husband, Lord Shiva, in the Himalayas. But for four golden
days in autumn, she returns to her parents' house, accompanied by her children,
an occasion that mortals celebrate with pomp and pageantry. The essence of the
festivities thus lies in coming home and being with all those whom one loves.
It's difficult to get
this warm, fuzzy sensation sitting in a large school cafeteria that has been
converted into a Durga Pujo venue, thousands of miles away from the place I
call home. As a matter of fact, it's difficult to consider the American Durga
Pujo as even a mildly authentic experience, since four days of religious
ceremonies are often squeezed into a Saturday and a Sunday (sometimes even a
single day) on a weekend that may be before or after the actual Durga Pujo
days, an experience as unreal as celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas on the
same day in the month of April.
The mind tends to
wander, back to when one didn't have to settle with pallid re-creations in
foreign lands. In Kolkata when I was a child, the excitement starting building
in the month of August. Organizers of community Durga Pujos, of which there
were thousands, would go knocking door to door, using every technique from
gentle emotional blackmail to enforcer-like intimidation to collect donations.
The shopping and gift-giving season would also be in full swing, with the scientist
in me trying to calculate an objective measure of how much my relatives loved
me by counting the number of shirt pieces and trouser pieces I received.
About three weeks
before the event, the countdown would begin in earnest. Elaborate bamboo
structures were set up at every street-corner and park. Very rapidly, these
skeletons would be transformed by cloth and artwork into exquisitely beautiful pandals, the temporary structures in
which the Durga idols would be housed once they arrived. Which they did soon
enough, in trucks, their faces covered because one was not allowed to see the
Goddess and her children unless it was time. Of course that was one of the few
times that time was taken seriously. Otherwise, that concept was pretty
elastic. Theoretically, the ceremony is for four days. In fact, it stretches to
six, sometimes even seven.
Those days would be
the shortest of the year. There were just so many things to do. Night-long
pandal-hopping expeditions in rented cars, stuck in traffic for 60 minutes and
moving for five. Enjoying oily chicken rolls from street-side vendors. Getting
my feet trampled on while trying to join the line at College Square. Gawking at
the supreme level of artistry on display at the Mohammed Ali Park pandal.
Strutting up and down Maddox Square, admiring the ethereal beauty of the
Goddess in clay and the angels of flesh and blood that flit around, all dressed
up in their finest, the cadence of their laughter melting into the music of the
drumbeats, a testament to how, when the Gods come to earth, they bring heaven
with them.
Of course everything
has to end, more so when the Kolkata police stipulates the deadline for idol
immersion.
Sweets would then be
exchanged, married women would playfully smear vermilion (sindoor), the mark of
marriage for Hindu women, on each others' foreheads in a ceremony known as
sindoor khela, a quiet tear would be shed as the idols would float away in the
Ganges, and the burden of all the work that I had pushed off for months telling
myself "I will do it after Pujo" would bear down upon me with great
urgency even as the anticipation and planning for next year would begin.
Now of course, many
years later and many miles away, things are different.
The new Durga Pujo is
an optional social event, scheduled around my life.
The old Durga Pujo was
my life, and everything else was scheduled around it.
By the light of day,
Arnab Ray is a research scientist at the Fraunhofer Center For Experimental
Software Engineering and also an adjunct assistant professor at the Computer
Science department of the University of Maryland at College Park. Come night,
he metamorphoses into blogger , novelist
("May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss" and "The Mine") and
columnist.
He can be followed at @greatbong on Twitter.
[The festival, which
begins Saturday, marks the goddess Durga's descent to earth with her children,
and devotees in Kolkata will see for the first time the handiwork of
Kumartuli's artists for this year's celebration. Priests will bless the pandals,
or idol displays, and the Durga idol's face will be revealed to the beat of
traditional drummers. Women compete in cooking contests called anandamelas, and
the city will be thronged with families touring the thousands of displays until
late in the evening. ]
By Sean Mclain
KOLKATA-- On a hot and
humid July afternoon in Kumartuli, Kolkata's historic potter's district,
Shankar Kumar Paul was playing absentmindedly with a ball of clay, turning it
first into a swan and then into an elephant.
"This is God's
work," he said.
Mr. Paul was experimenting
with designs for this year's Durga Puja festivities, for which he and other
artisans would sell 3,000 idols. "It's just like when you cook -- you
don't know if it's good until you taste it; you don't know how good an idol
will be unless you model it," he said. The festival, which
begins Saturday, marks the goddess Durga's descent to earth with her children,
and devotees in Kolkata will see for the first time the handiwork of
Kumartuli's artists for this year's celebration. Priests will bless the pandals,
or idol displays, and the Durga idol's face will be revealed to the beat of
traditional drummers. Women compete in cooking contests called anandamelas, and
the city will be thronged with families touring the thousands of displays until
late in the evening.
"Puja is a
competitive sport in West Bengal," said Mr. Paul. Every year, thousands of
neighborhood associations, clubs and wealthy families construct elaborate,
often themed pandals and compete for awards and prizes. The best pandals
receive corporate sponsorship.
Like many of the idol
makers in Kumartuli, Mr. Paul believes his work is sacred. "While we make
Durga thakur [idols], we don't eat meat or drink alcohol," he said. Mr.
Paul did confess to having the occasional cigarette, explaining, "I can't give
up everything."
Kolkata's idol-making
industry is dominated by a few families, and many of the businesses are handed
down father to son. But men like Mr. Paul are a dying breed - not only are
their numbers dwindling, but their traditional methods are being pushed aside
for more modern ones.
Ironically, it was the
increased success of the Kumartuli sculptors that is leading to their decline.
As puja celebrations became increasingly popular, the fortunes of these
families increased, which meant the children of idol makers were sent to school
instead of learning the trade. That has led to a decline in the overall numbers
of idol makers. From around 350 master sculptors, the number has fallen to
around 150.
"If their
children get educated, they choose other professions with steady work instead
of this seasonal work," said Kaushik Ghosh, 37, the son of the famous
Kumartuli sculptor Amar Nath Ghosh.
Mr. Ghosh and his
father broke with tradition a decade ago, a move that is dividing Kolkata's
idol-making community. They took their business online and began
making fiberglass versions of the idols.
Traditionally, a Durga
Puja idol is taken to the water at the end of the 10-day holiday, submersed in
water and allowed to float away. But there is little need for Bengali
communities outside of India to purchase clay idols, since their local
antipollution laws prevent them from submersing their idols in water. Instead,
they keep them to worship year after year. Fiberglass, which is hardier and
retains color better, is a sounder investment.
Fiberglass is also
less prone to damage and far lighter than clay idols. A typical seven-foot-tall
clay idol weighs around 1,000 pounds. A similar-sized fiberglass idol weighs
one-tenth of that.
Babu Pal, the
secretary of the Kumartuli Potters Cultural Association, said that the business
from overseas is growing rapidly. "Last year there were about 30 idols
sent abroad; this year it's 44. By next year it should be even more," he
said.
The Ghosh family
dominates the international market for Durga idols. Of the 44 idols sent abroad
from Kumartuli this year, 30 were made by the Ghosh family. "You would be
hard pressed to find an idol in the States not made by us. All the New York
idols are ours," Mr. Ghosh said.
Other famous sculptors
have begun following in Mr. Ghosh's footsteps and have taken their business
online, including the Gora Chand Paul family and
the Badal Chandra Paul family.
West Bengal, which
recently banned the submersion of idols to cut down on water pollution from the
lead-based paints used on clay idols, is also seeing some, albeit few, Bengalis
switch to fiberglass idols as well. Kolkata is in the middle of a construction
boom, and high rises are popping up everywhere. Middle-class families who want
to hold a family puja would be hard pressed to get an idol weighing half a ton
into their apartment, but fiberglass versions can be easily carried by a few
people.
Mr. Paul has few kind
words for his colleagues who are switching to fiberglass.
Across the narrow
alleyway from his workshop is a rival that this year decided to abandon clay
for fiberglass. While Mr. Paul sat waiting for customers, he watched as idols
were carried out his rival's door. "He's not a real artist. He uses
machinery and laborers," he said.
He admitted, however,
that he will find it hard to compete if fiberglass continues to grow in
popularity.
"What work we do
in 160 days, they do in six days," he said.
Sean McLain is a
freelance journalist based in New Delhi. You can follow him on Twitter @McLainSean
