They Hate the Pujas!

[Guest guest]

Sample this old Bengali joke: `When does the beat of the dhaak sound

the sweetest?'

 

`When it stops playing.'

 

That, in a nutshell, will tell you why the Durga Puja in Bengal is

not just about sugar and spice and all that's nice. The majority may

love the festival — with its grand idols and pandals, loud noise and

teeming crowds. But an irate minority has started complaining

bitterly about all that the Pujas stand for today.

 

So, the dhaak — the huge, barrel-shaped drum with a beat like a

booming cannon — may well be an abiding symbol of the Pujas for the

Bengali. For the grumblers, it is a pet hate. Coupled with the

blaring loudspeaker, the incessant drumming of a dhaak — they argue —

can be deafening.

 

With the decibels hitting the high notes, tempers are rising in

Calcutta. Durga Puja, for one tired section of the people, is

nothing but days of bumper-to-bumper traffic jams, bulging shopping

bags, road diversions and hectic socialising. "It's all about

rushing from one place to another to meet friends, family,

acquaintances you don't even care about. In fact, it's almost like

meeting deadlines at office," says Sourav Bose Chowdhury, manager at

a leading private bank. A quiet Puja is something no one has heard

of this side of 1980s.

 

Bose Chowdhury is not the only one getting worked up. A rising

chorus of voices is protesting the excess that goes by the name of

the festive spirit in Calcutta every year. "It's a waste of money

and resources," says Onir, director of My Brother Nikhil, who spent

his childhood and college years in Calcutta. Actor Rupa Ganguly goes

a step further. "It's amazing how the city remains paralysed for

four days. What's even more stupid is the competition among pandals

to grab prizes," she stresses.

 

But the resourceful Bengali is far too smart to be caught off guard

by the mess, which culminates in the madness that begins today on

Sashthi. For most, the shortest cut out is packing their bags and

pushing off for quieter latitudes. "Calcutta and its gimmicky Pujas

hardly hold any attraction for me. I go somewhere close by — often

to my ancestral home near Santiniketan in Birbhum," says singer and

actor Shilajit. This is what painter Paritosh Sen used to do,

too. "Age doesn't permit me to travel too much these days, but

earlier I would go away just to escape the pounding of the

loudspeakers," he says.

 

The Bengali, of course, is notorious for the distances he can travel

to avoid the Puja frenzy. Known for his wanderlust, the Bengali

traveller — usually identified by his monkey cap — can be spotted in

the remotest of places. And while Durga Puja is usually the right

time to travel, for the long stretch of holidays it offers, more and

more Bengalis are leaving town to get away from the Pujas.

 

The consequences are often remarkable, as in the case of Dinesh

Bhattacharya, a retired chartered accountant. "On a Puja trip to

Vrindavan, I noticed how everyone — the priests, the tourist guides

and even the local shopkeepers — spoke Bengali fluently. Finally, on

enquiring, I was told that the tourism industry of Vrindavan

survives mostly on Bengalis, especially those who come during the

Pujas. They didn't have a choice but to learn the language."

 

Soumitra Kundu, administrative officer of Kundu Special, one of the

oldest travel agencies in Calcutta, has seen this first hand for the

past two decades. "The Puja holidays are a good excuse to escape

from the grind of city life," he feels. The figures obviously back

him up.

 

Of the 1,200 Puja tour bookings of Kundu Special, over 700 were

blocked on the day the bookings opened in July — registering a 60-70

per cent jump compared to other months. At Cox and Kings, overseas

bookings jump by 50 to 60 per cent for the Puja season, says Suman

Bhattacharjee, manager (leisure).

 

The mass exodus goes back to the Seventies, when the spirit of Durga

Puja started souring with unfair — and often menacing — demands for

chanda (donations). "Organising the festival went into the hands of

the local toughs and the city mafia. The devotee was important only

in passing," remembers Calcutta boy Suhel Seth, head of ad agency

Equus.

 

But that's not always the way it was. Durga Puja, originally held in

aristocratic Bengali homes, became a mass celebration in the final

decades of British rule. Baghbazar Sarbojonin, now in its 87th year,

was one of the first to start the tradition of a `public' Durga Puja

in the heart of old north Calcutta.

 

Subhas Chandra Bose was the president of the organising committee in

1938-39. "We have gone in for corporate sponsorship, but are also

maintaining our age-old traditions such as Sindoor Khela on

Dashami," says Goutam Neogy, honorary general secretary of the Puja

committee.

 

Some believe the landmark year for the Pujas was 1982. "That's the

year Asian Paints started giving away the Sharad Samman awards.

Durga Puja has never been the same after that," says Abhijit

Bhattacharya, archivist at the Centre for Studies in Social

Sciences, who is part of a team documenting the changing nature of

Durga Puja.

 

Those who believe that the Pujas are getting more and more

commercialised are not quite enamoured of the trend of theme Pujas

either. Theme Pujas — where a Kerala village or a Marathi fish-

market is recreated as the backdrop — and sponsorship have been the

rage since the Nineties. The present-day Puja haters, however,

believe that these trends have taken away all that was simple and

sacred about the Pujas.

 

But theme Pujas continue to rule, for a large section looks forward

to the innovative idols and pandals. "Theme Pujas are artistic as

they use crafts from all over rural India," holds author Shirshendu

Mukherjee. But Shilajit doesn't agree. "Where does it end? We've had

pandals made out of grains, glass, biscuits, lozenges — what next?

How far will the organisers go to use the shock factor?"

 

Quite far, it seems from the look of things. For example, one Puja

this year has taken up the tsunami disaster as its theme. Not

surprisingly, quite a few of the Puja grousers are leaving for the

Andamans. They'd rather face the tsunami than stay back home during

the Pujas.

 

SOURCE: The Telegraph, Calcutta

URL:

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1051009/asp/look/story_5325492.asp#