PUJAS

September has set in. soon enough we are going to step into October. October-the month of celebration. Or, is it so? The Bengalis are famous as a race that celebrates one occasion or the other all year around. So what’s so special about October? Only one answer comes to me. It is the time of the ‘Durga Puja’. It is the time when Goddess Durga visits us. We being the Generation Next ought to imagine ‘Ma Durga’ in jeans and a kurta, ‘Saraswati and Lakshmi’ with streaked hair and our dear ‘Karthik and Ganesh’ with mobile phones and spikes in the hair. But do we? No we don’t. We still imagine ‘Ma Durga’ as the lady in red with a huge red ‘bindi’ on her forehead, and the parting in her hair smeared with ‘sindoor’; eyes glittering like sapphires and a strange energy emanating from her smile. She decides the right and wrong in the world. Her all seeing eye-her third eye-bestows blessings on the people around her. And that’s how probably Indians of all age groups view her as.
But before we come to the actual ceremony of the Pujas, we will just rewind back to the month before. Just like October is the month of celebration, September is the month of preparation. Preparation for the Pujas. That includes shopping, shopping and more shopping. September finds people swarming about in good looking clothes, going from one shop to another and getting caught in immense traffic jams in the process. It seems as if the preparation for the oncoming festival is a cause for celebration itself. I, being a schoolgirl know exactly what teenagers feel. School, which earlier was an exciting prospect, now becomes a mere ritual. All they think and talk about are the clothes that they have bought for the pujas, where they would go for the holidays and planning about how they will get together during the pujas. It’s as if they cannot wait for the pujas to come. And when it comes they don’t want to let it go. This year only there is going to be only three days of pujas. You should see my friends. The amount of moaning and groaning and grumbling!
Another telltale sign of the fact that people are in the Puja mode is the amount of traffic that are found in the roads. Even at two ‘o’ clock in the afternoon in a working day it is difficult to have a peaceful time shopping. Several people complain about the impossible circumstances that get created but to be entirely truthful, people enjoy even this kind of disorganized situation of the traffic.But sometimes I wonder: is this what “Durga Puja” is all about? Shopping, wearing new clothes, roaming around different pandals, standing in a line to eat in a restaurant? Or is it the atmosphere that only a privileged few enjoy? The environment of the houses of the families who perform “Durga Puja”. Where the ladies of the house dress up in red and white sarees on Shoptomi, where dancers come for the “Dhunuchi Naach” on Oshtomi, where “vidaai” is given to “Maa Durga” on Doshomi itself. The truth is that like two sides of a coin these two views are the different perspectives of the Pujas. And if I be foolish to ask the question “which one is better?” a heated argument will ensue leading to a circumstance that even “Maa Durga” won’t be able to handle. So I won’t ask the question. Because the perspective doesn’t matter. Though people may get divided in their opinions regarding this issue but the anticipation, excitement and the happiness that floods each of our beings will bind us together into one. And in the end this is what “Durga Puja” is all about. The integration of the people living individual lives in one place during a time, which would wash away all the depression, jealousy and feelings of inadequacies in us and replace them with purity and love.