Pujor golpo (Puja Stories)

Robindro Shetu (Howrah Bridge)

Photograph courtesy: http://www.theamberwolf.com/

I miss the rambunctiousness that I know is laughing over Kolkata. The dhak-dhol, the spontaneous stalls where you get jhal deem (spiced eggs) and chilléd Thaamsaap. The crowds, the lighting, the notun shari people can't afford. The perfect, utterly sentimental, overflowing-with-hospitality bangaliness of it all.

When I was a little girl and Mum was in advertising, we would go for the Asian Paints Sharod Shamyan. A competition for the best idol. The most creative, the most authentic etc. We would go joyriding in a rickety old van. Go to every pandal we could fit into the night. Eat at the dozens of wayside stalls that blossom suddenly during pujo. Come home at five in the morning.
Even before that, I have faint memories of my mama's old white Fiat. Till date, it is the most beautifully maintained car I have seen. Some eight of us crammed into it, me half-asleep and squashed into somebody's lap. Driving around, everybody well-fed but still hungry(you don't stop eating those last five days of Pujo), cracking terrible jokes and stopping at every phuchka stall.
I don't remember much more. The people whose laps I sleepily occupied are strangers now. The family I used to spend those bright, faraway nights with has now been stretched to proportions I can't always reach.
I'm sure life wasn't easy or simple even fifteen years ago. I know there were disturbances and under-the-surface darkness. But for those few days, people let go. They ate too much, talked and talked and talked, laughed over everything and took spontaneous decisions to go looking for street-food at one in the morning.




Happy Pujo to all of you who were there.