So, I am back from my 2.5 weeks vacation at Kolkata and it took me one whole week, after coming back, to recover from the homesick blues. Well, the whole Puja experience in Kolkata did live up to its expectations and in fact, offered much more. Not that this was my first Pujo in Kolkata. But never before had I planned so much for the Pujos and this time, I had a plan to cover some part of the city on every Pujo day (for the uninitated, it goes on for 4 days mainly). Of course, at the end, I was left with sore feet and a tired body after 4 days of endless walking and jostling amidst crowds in an extreme hot and humid climate. But all in all, it was a satisfying experience.
I don’t really want to write an essay on how my Pujos went ‘coz there simply is so much to write and besides, the Pujo topic has been covered widely in all media. So I’ll briefly summarise the highs and lows of our Pujo experience.
Yay! -
- Rain Gods having mercy – the clouds were looming large as Panchami (5th day of Pujo) had set in and the weathermen were spelling doom for this year’s Pujo with cyclonic storms looming large. The satellite pics were all white washed towards the eastern part of India. Mahashashthi (6th day of Pujo) even saw some mild rains with gloomy and sultry conditions through out the day. The situation looked extremely murky. But as usual, the Met. department got it wrong and suddenly, the clouds cleared out of the way for some bright blue skies. We didn’t see a single drop rain till we came back which was two weeks later.
- Media coverage – Now, this is one big change that I, as a person who has moved out of Kolkata, got to realise this time. Media coverage of Pujo is no more confined to DD Bangla’s daily Pujo Parikrama, symbols of ‘Kaash fool’ and Dhak appearing along with the channel symbol, afternoon “Chooti Chooti” shows and some nice pics of Pujo in the papers. Pujo is media now. Every Pujo had some news or other television channel covering them with the same old questions being posed to the 15-mins-fame happy Pujo revellers – “Apnar ekhane eshe kemon lagche? Pujo apnar jonne ki maane raakhe?” (How are you finding this place? What does Pujo mean to you?). This would be responded to with the same answers having a lot of ‘”Darun, darun” (Excellent, excellent) utterances in between. Print media has undergone a huge change with the major newspapers publishing the route maps, emergency contacts numbers, Pujo articles, recipes etc. apart from the usual pics and reports. Radio also now has a huge presence with live traffic updates, Pujo pandal updates, special programs et al. I must say, all this has been for the better ‘coz they really added to the Pujo atmosphere.
- Pujo Traffic – Yes, this actually was good if you compare it with the previous years. At least, much better than the last time I had seen (that’d be 2006). Lot of traffic police were deployed at every point and they were ably helped by volunteer organizations, school scouts, civic volunteers, pandal officials etc. True, one still had to park their cars far from the pandals and lots of roads were closed or made one-ways and all this would only add to the frustration. But if you look at the larger picture, it was all done in a planned manner and traffic was indeed flowing throughout the city and there wasn’t a bottleneck anywhere. Hats off to the traffic department and volunteers who sacrificed their celebrations to make it easier for others. God bless!
- V.I.P passes – The sceptics may cry that everyone is equal in front of God and no one should get special privileges. Even I would have been tempted to say the same a month back. But then, my aunt handed me these pieces of paper with Pujo pandal names written on them with these words written in bold – “V.I.P Pass“. And she asked me to once go against my ethics and try them out. Next I saw myself breezing past a hapless queue of Pujo revellers, all sweating bucket loads in the Kolkata heat, only because I had this small yet extremely powerful piece of paper in hand. What more, even inside the pandal, I was in a separate section right in front of the idols with the best view of them and not a single sould around. Unity and equality can take a hike – give me them V.I.P passes!
Uggh! -
- Kolkata Humidity – It’s official. I have completely lost my adaptibility to Kolkata’s sultry climate. This, or it could be that it was humid beyond normal levels during Pujo in 2008. ‘Coz I was sweating. And I was sweating good. Real good. And I wasn’t completely alone. People were pouring sweat dressed in their most pompous state in this kind of weather. It wasn’t a good sight, I’ll tell you. One really wished at times that it actually would start to rain.
- Crowds – Well, nothing new here. It’s Pujo after all. Yeah, yeah, the crowd is what makes Kolkata’s Pujo even more special. But 1) I can do with a lesser volume of it. 2) Amidst all this crowd, for the first time, I didn’t see a single pretty face through out this Pujo. Now that’s stretching my patience too much.
- Pick pockets – Somebody actually thought that my mobile phone is an expensive one and so decided to filch while I was all engrossed in taking one of my Nat Geo pics. The crook would have realised soon what a raw deal he had managed. It was a 2.5 years old Motorola L7 with a good set of scratches, a battered battery and a wiped off keypad. Only regret from my side, I lost all the contacts.
- Endless walks – As mentioned before, there was a lot of walking involved while pandal hopping. Again, nothing new, but is quite challenging for a lazy bum like me. Can’t say it did any good to reduce my waistline. But it certainly left me with two very sore feet.
It was a complete experience overall and now I can proudly say that I have indeed seen Kolkata’s Pujo. But like all good things, this also did come to an end and it’s back to normal life now. But as the popular saying goes in Bengal, “Aasche bochor, abar hobe” (Next year, it will happen again). And so it will.
- Yabber
