Duggo Pujo and Emails

It has come again, that special time of the year when all Bengalis feel a pull in their heartstrings to be homeward bound. The “Happy Puja” mails have started poring in, mostly from people whom I hardly know. The emails will be repeated again with slight change in wordings at the end of the year – That special time of the year, as HBO prefers to call it.

I got one such email in my school friends group recently, and as more and more replies kept pouring in, people spoke of a kaleidoscope of broken images from a forgotten childhood, stuff about their parents, and how the Siuli tree has died now. It was a beautiful melancholy.

My own memories consist of my desperate attempts at putting the pillow over my head to shut the omnipresent loudspeakers out on the Mahalaya eve, getting drunk with a close group of friends on the asthami evenings - we ruled our own universes during the Puja days. Another favourite was sitting out the evenings in Maddox Square , and looking at the beautiful sari clad creatures who flitted about - they never failed to materialize out of the thin air at that enchanted place during the Pujas.

Now that friends have scattered all over the world, in pursuit of greener pastures, the only thing that ties me Calcutta are my parents, and the distant fragrance of a place, which was once my home. Durga Puja has stopped being the showstopper in my life J. I was in office through the Pujas, and it was business as usual for me …


Ciao then, until the next post, and a very happy Puja season to you all.