Reminiscing Durga Puja days

When I was young I really thought whether Durga Puja is the exclusive festival of Durgapur; my birth place. Obviously that is not so but to me and many alike the definition of Durga Puja is stilled limited to the boundaries of this small town of West Bengal. Every puja holiday, I have so far afforded,  has been spent in Durgapur only. It is beyond doubt that celebrations in Kolkata overshadows anything anywhere but the soul doesn't achieves satisfaction till the lungs breath air of the hometown.

The meaning and way of celebrating Durga Puja in Durgapur has changed with time. When I was young it would start with the initiation of the Puja holidays. Though the holidays would start from Panchami, books would be packed for good right from Mahalaya. Those were the days of no FM or YouTube, so if you want to listen to Birendra babu it has to be on All India Radio at 4:30 am on the day of Mahalaya. The Mahalaya on radio would be followed by one on Doordarshan 1 at around 6:30 am; a more logical time to get up specially on a holiday.

The period between Mahalaya to Panchami would be spent around the under-construction pandal of our para puja. Climbing the bamboo structure along-with playing  hide and seek around the pandal would comprise our evening games. My para puja at that time was Edison Madhyapalli which used to be held in the field of Balaka Manimela; the pandal wouldn't be dismantled before Laxmi Puja. On Panchami evening we would celebrate our school closure with a prolonged adda in the fields of Central Puja. The adda would not end before 9 or 9:30 pm; which was almost equivalent to past midnight in those days.

Those were days when we were pretty crazy about volunteering. We would wear the badges with a sense of pride and would control the traffic flow or manage the parking with a lot of authority; obviously with blessings and backing of the para dadas. While the evenings would be spent volunteering at the para puja, the mornings would be spent pandal hopping. During kid days it used to be on my father's Bajaj Super. Later when I got my cycle and grew too big to be triple-carried on scooter, I would join friends for pandal hopping. It was quite a tough task to cover the pandals of the township and Benachity on cycle but nothing could subdue our spirit. At the end of puja, after the idol immersion has taken place, organizers of the puja would entertain the locals with an open air theater; generally Amitabh Bachchan movies from 70s would be screened. Some way down the line that practice was stopped.

One thing we absolutely dreaded was rain during the puja days. One time it so happened I couldn't walk back home when the rain started, so had to take refuge inside the pandal. However the rain and winds were so bad that the top facade of the pandal in the front just collapsed. That was quite a heart break for us as we used to be quite proud of our para puja.

As I entered into adolescence volunteering seemed a less attractive option; it was left to the younger ones. I don't remember which year but at some point I started receiving a Rs. 50 per day grant for the four or five days of the puja. The evenings would be spent mostly at Vivekananda or Ananda Vihar which were then the favorite hot spots for teen age boys and girls. And on some days, the evenings would be spent in the fields of Central Puja with peanuts, jhalmuri, jalebi, lemon tea or coffee over some wholesome adda sessions with family or friends. Pandal hopping on cycle still used to happen as long as a partner could be found; most friends moved to mopeds and scooter hence getting a partner was not easy. I remember the last pandal hopping on cycle I did was in the Durga Puja of 2004. I graduated in 2005 and the first big thing I bought with my first job's salary was a Bajaj Discover; the days of cycling had come to an end for me.

With time Vivekananda Puja has lost all it's luster; Chaturanga has taken it's place now. Central Puja has lost it's laid back charm because of rapid rise of Marconi as one of the most popular puja destinations of Durgapur from where the spill over  flood of humans also crowds Central Puja. My Durga Puja adda with friends with time shifted to Bhagat Singh and later to Chaturanga.

While the big budget pandals, exquisite decorations  and the ocean of human beings jostling for a little space in the heat and humidity is the general image we get of Durga Puja in Kolkata, for Durgapur it's just the opposite. It's simple, less hectic and more close to the heart. Durga Puja in Durgapur means spending time with parents, taking the kids for a joy ride on motorcycle, spending hours with friends over tea and jhalmuri, attending school reunion, reading Puja Barshiki Anandamela and just relax.

Here below are some clicks of Durga Puja from my hometown which I had captured. As you would understand the artistic display is not poor either.

Durga Puja 2014

Durga Puja 2016 (captured with phone camera)