THE NAUKA AND THE PALKI

Ya devi sarbabhuteshshu, Shakti roopena sansthita

 Namasteshwai Namasteshwai Namasteshwai namo namaha."

Even though early, the Puja is surely in.  My wife says that New

Market is chock- a -block filled up with 'shop-till-droppers'. Almost every alternate day she preens around with her collection of saris she has gathered  over the past few months. The Sharadiya Sales banners are splashed across the malls, Gariahat and Hatibagan, Kankurgachhi and Sakher Bazar. I am receiving  requests from friends for booking guest houses for a family getaway. I, too,  have already made a plan for a brief pre-puja trip to Mandarmoni with my family on 28th instant. 

My mad, mad friends are splashing the Facebook with photos of what is Nature's  autumnal or Sharad-ic knock - the kash phool. The white, swaying grass has  grown  luxuriantly all over in  Bengal, on the dried bed of Kangsabati River, the aals or medhs of  the paddy fields in  Belpahari, along nayanjalis in Bagnan and  the divider of NH-6.. The dhakis, who have already announced a noisy presence during the Vishwakarma Puja, will soon start converging at Sealdah Station and Bhowanipore from where the organisers will take them away. The roads are being blocked to make space for the pandals, the Corporation is flexing its muscles to make the organisers pay for the tar-  vandalism,  and the sights of carts  carrying huge loads of bamboos are all too common.

Actually, nothing changes much but I still enjoy the routine. Like  previous years,  I have managed to get myself invited  to a pandal judging panel on the saptami . The ashtami lunch invitation will come, shortly .  At  our old Ballygunje Circular Road pandal , the final visit will  be on Dashami for Sindoor khela and the revelry at night after bhasan at Babu Ghaat. A large number of Bengalis leave for a holiday, many claim they like to stay back for  their para pujo but still the snakes of crowd at the pandals  get longer year after year and the roadside eateries and balloon stalls continue to do good business.

I love to read the newspapers which carry out interesting trivia and stories connected with Durga Puja.

My family awaits the Phulpati procession - 1999

The  other day Hindustan Times brought out a huge page on the

worship of the Devi in Darjeeling - a place where I lived for close to two years in the last years of the previous millennium. The Nepalese celebrate  it as Bara Dasain. Preparations start on Mahalaya with sowing of wheat and barley in mud beds on Jamara Aunsi and placing  copper pitchers in a ritual called Ghat Sthapana.  To  me, the the Dasai celebrations are remembered  for three things- the Phulpati procession of Kanya Devis and the Lakhey dance (  and one of the bigger would also touch  the SP's residence at Campbell Cottage from where it could be moved only after a nudge with gifts of rum bottles), the Maar on the Navami at Dali, the Police lines and for  the huge, colourful tikka ( rice grains, curd and sin door) people sport on their foreheads on  Dasain.

The paper also brought out a feature on the Tribal Durga or Guptamoni, meaning 'secret treasure' but implying' hidden goddess' of Jhargram- also  a guardian deity  of motorists on NH6. In addition to being hidden, her puja is also rendered unique by the fact that it was started by a Lodha woman and the hymns are sung  in Bengali, not Sanskrit. A part of the colourful 'Little India' tradition, the Devi here is worshipped throughout the year and devotees hang up terracotta toy horses and strung on thread to fulfil their wishes.

In the Bengali speaking parts of the country, the Durga Puja is an occasion to release the 'Sharadiya' songs in the form of special albums. Started by the Gramophone Company. Vinyl records collector Susanto Kumar Chatterjee says that 14 vinyl discs were released in 1914, the release preceded by the publication of a "Sharadabali' which announced the release a' 10 inch violet double sided 78 RPM disc ' priced at 3 rupaiya and 12 annals would have six songs by Manodasundari Dasi, Narayan Chandra Mukherjee and K Mullick. Later on this was carried forward by  great teams like  Salil Choudhary and Lata Mangeshkar, RD Burman and Asha Bhonsle and other great artists  like Hemant Kumar, Kishore Kumar and Shyamal Mitra.  

Way back in 1975, Nirode Mazumdar created  the idols for  Bakul Bagan community Durga Puja in South Kolkata and it set a trend for famous artists to follow in his footsteps - Rathin Maitra and Paritosh Sen, Ramananda Bandopadhyaya and now Paresh Maity. On Saptami when I visit the pandals, I shall be hearing  a large number of extremely talented artists explain their art and theme of the pandals. Bengal is an artisanal society- this forcefully bursts out  during the pooja. Some old timers may feel  a stab of nostalgia  for the simplicity of old day but in my view,  a puja which actually began as a celebratory tamasha cannot look back and will keep on getting more opulent.

There is an interesting tidbit about idol making.  A few artisans like Mahadeb Pal , to beat the economies of the Kumartuli works , took to painting the eyes for other artisans. Sad, happy, or angry - after all, the eyes of an idol  become the mirror of her mind. Nowadays, Mahadeb  even goes to neighbouring Bihar and Jharkhand.  Just to paint the eyes of Ma.

What I did just  for a lark  day before yesterday turned out to be pretty interesting. I went to the Indian Museum to attend  a workshop on idol making. Even as Mr. Mondol explained to me the wall sculpture his artisans were making had three layers of application of materials- the alluvial soil and straw followed by a coat of loamy soil and husk to be topped by mixture of brick dust before being painted in ochre colour, I was captivated by the enthusiasm of hundreds of school students who had thronged the courtyard of the Jadughar.  The twelve and a half feet pratima  which was being made was an enlarged reproduction of one of the first terracotta figurines of the devi found from Bhita, Bodhgaya,  of 7th CE antiquity.

Shortly thereafter  was  an interesting talk on Durga by Indrajit Chowhdhury of Ananda Bazar Patrika, whose erudite presentation even the rains could not mar as the bunch of young people, mostly NIFT students, relocated to a staircase to listen. He informed  that out of the 70 different idols and terra cotta and wooden figurines of Durga discovered in medieval- early modern Bengal, only ten depicted her vahan as a singha or lion while in large number, the demon mahishasur was depicted only as a  buffalo or mahish and not in its humanised form of a rakhshas. 

But quite inexplicably, when some,like the Sovabazar and Krishnagar zamindars started the Durga Puja in the 18th /19th century, the vahan depicted was not a lion but a stylised horse!! Being prodded,  Indrajit hazarded a guess that it could be due to the local artisans' ignorance of the looks of a lion which was absent in Bengal.  Later on I asked some of my Bengali friends, but even the combined knowledge of two generations could  not throw any light. 

So even as Ma Durga  comes on a boat and departs in a palki, I have decided to do two things I haven't done despite my so many years in Kolkata- go to the Hooghly on Mahalaya to watch the tarpan and also to Tiritti Bazaar at the crack of dawn for a Chinese breakfast. Who wants to join us?

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