I grew up in a Kolkata that is vastly different than the one today. My childhood memories are not of afternoons spent in South City’s sprawling food court eating burgers or watching movies in IMAX theaters.
In my youth, Kolkata fell frequently into darkness during incessant power cuts and my brother and I grew desperate to escape the thick, hot air of my grandfather’s house. We played cricket on the streets and ate phuchka at the New Alipur park. I saw the movie “Yaadon ki Baaraat” at least a dozen times just to get out of the sun, sit under a fan and listen to my favorite Bollywood song, “Chura Liya Hai Tumne.” That was the only way to hear it unless a neighborhood paan and bidi stall decided to blast it with a mic.
Adda was a thing. I mean, really a thing, and we often accompanied Ma on evening jaunts to visit friends and relatives. I lived through food rations and water shortages. I hung from crowded buses hoping my slip-on shoes would not slip off. Back then, only the uber-wealthy owned cars. My father never did; not on his professorial salary at the Indian Statistical Institute.
Life seemed hard compared to the modern conveniences of what middle class Kolkatans have now. We had little in the way of consumer goods or comfort. We slept on hard beds and without air-conditioning, we awoke drenched every morning, our pores opened wide and cleaned by air wetter than a damp towel. I dreamed of a day when we would no longer have to beg my uncle, then a merchant marine, to bring us back Kit-Kats from his adventures overseas. Or when I wouldn’t have to think of creative ways to stretch the waistline on the one pair of jeans I had left, as though I could defy childhood growth.
School was tough, especially since my family moved in and out of India during those years and my brother and I fell behind in our Bengali, Hindi and Sanskrit skills. We were admitted to reputable schools on one condition: that by the time the next exams rolled around, we would not be failing in the vernacular languages. I remember stopping in front of the gates to Gokhale Memorial and Auxilium Convent to polish my black Bata shoes for fear of failing inspection. And I dreaded visits from Ms. Watson, our Anglo-Indian tutor, who possessed nails sharper than a knife and whittled away at our precious scented erasers purchased on a rare trip to New Market. Those erasers were status symbols, after all, in a world in which we had little.
But the one thing we did have was Durga Puja or Pujo, as the Bengalis call it. That meant no school for a few weeks, shiny new clothes and pandal hopping around Kolkata to see which neighborhood had erected the most beautiful idol.
We marked the dates at the start of the year. Calendars were coveted then, especially the slick English ones my uncle brought home from Exide India, where he was a top executive. They graced the mostly bare and whitewashed walls of our home along with poster versions of a Picasso self-portrait and Thomas Gainesborough’s “Blue Boy” that my parents carried back from one of our stays in America and had regally framed as though they were the real deal.
We consulted the Bengali calendars, of course, to make sure we got all the dates for that particular year right. Shashti, Saptami, Ashtami, Navami, Bijoya Dashami. The Bengali calendars tore easily and were cheaply printed in black and white, except for important days marked in sindur vermilion. Barathakuma, my father’s aunt who was widowed at an early age and returned home to live with her brother (my grandfather), consulted the calendar regularly. We observed Saraswati Pujo for the benefit of all the children of the house, lest we fell behind in our education. And I remember my grandmother organizing Annapurna Pujo on occasion.
I knew the stories behind each god and goddess just like kids in America know the story of Jesus’ birth. But just as Christmas shopping, decorating the tree and family feasts seem to trump everything else, so did the real meaning of pujos.
For me, they were an opportunity to smear my feet with alta (red dye), don one of my aunt’s saris, wear matching jewelry and kumkum (a dot on the forehead) and act older and more sophisticated than I really was. And of course, pujos meant good food and lots of mishti (sweets). My two youngest uncles were known for their hefty appetites and I have fond memories of them running up the stairs with vats of chomchom (a syrupy sweet) and mishti doi (sweet yogurt). I can still hear my aunt yelling at her brothers for dipping into the desserts even before the priest had arrived.
But nothing compared to the five days of revelry during Durga Pujo. Some years, the seventh month of the Hindu calendar came early, though I liked it better when it fell around my birthday in mid-October. That meant presents as well as new clothes. And it was a signal that the relentless monsoonal rains would soon end and give way to a cooler, dryer season. Back then, readymade garments bled dye like an animal at slaughter and my relatives presented us with fine cottons and silks weeks ahead of time so that our tailor could sew dresses and shirts to my mother’s specifications. How happy it made me to wear a new outfit for each of the five days of pujo.
Anticipation filled the air and burst through my heart. What heady days lay ahead. Food, gifts, celebration. I awoke to the sound of dhak and dhol (types of drums) and went to sleep with the aroma of camphor and coconut husk of the dhunuchi (incense).
I visited the various pandals with my friends and family and we argued with each other about which idol was the most beautiful. We ran to the New Alipur pandal for aarti (an offering of light) and watched frenzied dhunuchi dances.
I marveled at the varying images of the mother goddess. Durga. Shakti. Devi. There she was in all her splendor, the 10-armed warrior goddess riding a lion and slaying the once-invincible demon king.
And on the last day pujo, we fell to the feet of our elders to ask for blessings and then lined the second-floor balcony of my grandfather’s house to watch the processions carrying Durga and her four children to the Hooghly for immersion.
One year, my youngest uncle decided the Basu family would set up a food stall at the New Alipur park, where the neighborhood pujo was held. The women of the family crafted aloo chop (potato patties) for days and wrapped them in old Statesman newspapers to fry fresh for the hordes of people at the pandal. I was not yet a teenager but proud to have succeeded in my first ever job manning the stall.
We moved away from Kolkata when I was 12 and I only returned as a visitor in the years that followed. Most of the time, it was during the winter break when the weather was pleasant and my relatives had time off. Occasionally, I attended pujo in Atlanta, where I lived for 29 years but I had few Bengali friends and without my trusted calendars, I sometimes missed it altogether. Besides, it could never be the same as it was in Kolkata, I thought. I didn’t want to mar my memories.
After both my parents fell seriously ill, I spent months at a time in Kolkata. But never during Durga Pujo. It became an inconvenience for me. I traveled home to help Ma and Baba, both of whom had become dependent on others’ help by the late 1990s. My mother suffered a massive stroke in 1982 and was relegated to a wheelchair. She had also lost too many of her cognitive abilities to run a household. My father held the reins for many years until he, too, went down to Alzheimer’s. There was so much to be done when I visited—from sorting out finances to doctor appointments and medical tests to maintenance on our flat on Ballygunge Circular Road.
None of it was possible during the pujo holiday when Kolkata came to a complete stop on everything that was not Durga.
Over the years, my memories of Durga Pujo waned as did my interest in attending the festivities. Pandal hopping felt like an assault to all my senses. The crowds had grown too large and perhaps even uncivil; the heat was stifling and the constant thumping of the drums reminded me sadly of the bomb blasts I’d experienced in Iraq.
But what began to grow was my interest in the real meaning of Durga Pujo, especially after I began reporting from India, first for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper and then for CNN.
Many of my stories focused on the lack of rights for Indian women and the systemic abuse that some women are forced to endure. I wrote about girls who are denied the same education as their brothers or are forced into difficult arranged marriages. I met women from all over India who were struggling in some way.
And yet, I was surrounded by images of Durga, the ultimate female incarnation of strength, the protector of the universe.
Hindu legend goes that the gods created Durga to slay a king named Mahishasura, who had been granted immortality by Brahma, the creator. No man or animal could ever kill Mahishasura but Brahma had not spared him from a woman. So, when Mahishasura, high on his power, began attacking the world, the gods convened to devise a plan. They created Durga and gave her 10 arms to carry a weapon from each of the gods, including Shiva, the god of destruction, who bestowed upon Durga his trident. With it, the goddess dealt the last bloody blow to the demonic king.
How could it be, I wondered, that men who worship such a fierce representation of a woman could be guilty of sexism and misogyny, even? On the one hand, men fell to their knees before the mighty goddess while on the other, they treated their wives and daughters with disdain.
I struggled to reconcile the contradiction. I still do.
Then, in the fall of 2013, I found myself deep in the interior of Maharashtra, reporting a story about a woman who was raped by two policemen when she was still a teenager. Mathura pressed charges and found herself in the limelight; she had become the subject of a landmark case that would give rise to the women’s rights movement in India.
The rape had occurred four decades ago and finding Mathura did not come easy. When I finally entered her little hut in a village where she had restarted her life, her two grown sons stood in the way. They were the ones who spoke for their mother, they warned me. I looked into her eyes and thought she might have burst with words, like a levee over a swollen river, had her sons not been there that day. Instead, she stood obediently behind them, under the only object on the bare mud walls: a small framed painting of Durga.
The protector of the universe was present in this tiny and spartan hut in Gadchiroli District.
On the long drive back to Nagpur a few days later, I thought of so many things about Mathura and the wretchedness that had permeated her life. On the surface, she was a small woman with a frame of skin and bones who had toiled in menial jobs and managed somehow to lead a life without the stigma of rape haunting her at every second. Inside, she was fierce. Strong. Like Durga. She had survived the demons in her life.
After that reporting trip to Maharashtra, I flew to Kolkata to visit my family and friends. It was late September and the city was readying for Durga Pujo festivities. My aunt pleaded with me to stay a few extra days. “When is the last time you were here for pujo?” she asked me.
I could not give her an honest answer. It had been that long. For the first time in years, I felt an urge to stay. My birthday that year fell on Navami, the day before Bijoya Dashami.
“We can go visit everyone together,” my aunt said.
But I could not remain in Kolkata. My vacation had run out and I was now on deadline to write the story I had just reported. I packed my bags and prepared for the long haul back. But before I left, I made a quick trip to Gariahat, to the stalls along Rash Behari Avenue that sell figurines of Durga in almost every material imaginable. Terracotta, Indian cork, brass, copper, wood. I paid 85 rupees for a terracotta one small enough to easily wrap in newspaper.
And Durga traveled to America tucked in my laptop bag, across a continent and an ocean, to be with me now. And always.
