Why I Wait For 'Durga Pujo'...

That time of the year…..”maa aasche” (the goddess is coming)

The annual ten day affair, the most awaited time of the year, “SHARADOTSAVA”, the quintessence of being a Bengali, has come and gone. The intensity of emotions attached to it, linger. The sound of "dhak" still ringing in my ears, the sight of the glorious durga protima(idol) etched in my visual memory. The sights and smells of this festive season carry even more meaning than my first poetry, and just how inconspicuously that happened is a big mystery to me. Yes, indeed a very intriguing puzzle for a non-religious agnostic. Today, I attempt to unravel some of the mystery.   As I watch the whirlwind of cultural and religious rituals being manifested in an age-old ceremonial celebration, that never loses its sheen, I wonder, “how a ceremony, a festivity, has evolved as a prominent cultural identity of a community?”.

We know, every community, religion, state, nation has a well-defined or obscure cultural identity. The way they talk, what they eat, what they wear, what they find acceptable and what not…. “Their CULTURE”, something that’s not lawfully implemented, but it emerges and thrives within the community as an essential member of it. The culture goes beyond  politics/ religion, nevertheless, the latter influences the former in some way (to sound politically correct). But our culture is a self-organizing element of our community, something that binds us, something which we don’t create by set of rules and laws but something that emerges spontaneously from the intrinsic need of social interaction and creative and artistic expression of men and women. The culture defines how we interact, how we create, how we experience life. It’s the keyhole through which we look at the world. No wonder, different cultures have a different way of seeing life.

“Culture is the intersection of life and people itself. It’s how we deal with life, love, birth, death, disappointment…all of that is expressed in a culture.

-WENDELL PIERCE

Here, I stand right next to the Durga idol with my mother, as she bids farewell too Maa Durga on vijaya dashami. It is a bittersweet moment. There is nostalgia, there is sorrow as the goddess is leaving, and happiness as this festival has brought people together. Relatives, strangers acquaintances, we are all brought together in this grand carnival. As she kneels in veneration in front of the protima, I just stand in awe at the beauty of this wonderful piece of art forged out of mud. I probably wouldn’t understand her devotion to the goddess, but because of my skepticism, would I do away with the ten day affair with the wholesomeness of life?  A resounding ‘NO’. I owe my identity to this culture. The way women carry themselves, the way the men in our community have learnt to respect women, we derive it from the worship of the goddess. The way we have always been artistically inclined, paying emphasis to the trifling of life, making poetry out of it, we owe it to our culture. The way we go out and gorge on food, the way we talk pseudo-intellectual gibberish when out with friends. It’s the way we make friends; it’s the way we talk, the way we dress…. It’s the way we live life, and there never is any right or wrong way to live life. All other thriving cultures out there, they are bound by their festivities and rituals, as these festivities overpower the resentment between people. It’s a conduit of emotions between people, a way to feel human again, and the way to experience the bliss of living and not just existing.  And that’s why culture goes way beyond religion or law or any other artificial human construct. And that’s why i wait for 'durga pujo' every year, that's why 'durga pujo' will always hold more meaning to me than my first poem (it wasn’t original, anyway). I owe my identity to it and  now, I know ;

‘acceptance’ is the biggest religion there can ever be.