Durga Puja: The Goddess' Homecoming, American Style

[Guest guest]

Here is a lovely audio editorial by Sandip Roy (less than four

minutes long), broadcast on America's National Public Radio (NPR)

this morning, September 27, 2006:

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6147294

 

DURGA PUJA: THE GODDESS' HOMECOMING, AMERICAN STYLE

 

[Morning Edition, September 27, 2006]: On Thursday, millions of

Bengali Indians and Bangladeshis celebrate Durga Puja, the festival

of the Hindu mother goddess who banishes evil from the earth. These

days, commentator Sandip Roy observes Durga Puja in the San

Francisco Bay Area, where the celebration is more restrained than he

remembers:

 

As a child in Calcutta, as soon as we got a new calendar, I'd rush

to see when Durga Puja, the five-day homecoming of the Goddess

Durga, would fall.

 

Calcutta became a Puja madhouse -- blazing lights, millions of

people in stiff new clothes shoving and pushing -- as the tattered

New Ballygunge Sangha Marching Band played a tuneless medley of the

year's hit songs. Entire streets were blocked off with Pandals --

temporary temples of cloth and bamboo, each gaudier than the next.

 

At daybreak on the first day of the Pujas, we'd hear the invocation

to the Goddess on All India Radio echoing across the sleepy

neighborhood and welcoming her home. We heard the same songs and the

same voices for decades.

 

Here in the U.S., the five-day festival is squished into a weekend.

I walk into a school auditorium and see the men wearing their once-a-

year dhotis and the women in starched cotton saris. The priest, a

software engineer by day, is reciting Sanskrit prayers.

 

I look at the image of the ten-armed goddess astride a lion, killing

the evil buffalo demon. For a minute I'm taken back to Calcutta --

but only for a minute. This Durga is tiny, as she has to be, shipped

all the way from India.

 

In Calcutta, at the end of Durga Puja, we let the earthen image of

the goddess dissolve into the Hoogly River. Huge processions snaked

through the streets to the river. The drumbeats made the old houses

tremble. I feel a twinge of disappointment as I realize this doll-

sized image will be packed away for use next year like Puja in a

Box. The California Durga is botoxed into eternal life -- her clay

smile unchanging until next year.

 

I wonder if the Goddess misses looking different every year. Does

she long for the starbursts of fireworks lighting up the night sky

and the little clay lamps flickering at every doorway? The throngs

of children still wide-eyed at midnight?

 

"Don't worry," I tell her. It's almost like home here. With the

click of a mouse, I can send giant trays of sweets and fruits to

friends and family in India for Durga Puja. Or I can mail them

Hallmark cards for Diwali with images of little lamps and lotuses.

 

The tiny goddess smiles at us from the school auditorium stage. It

is last year's painted smile. But it forgives us.

 

SOURCE: NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

URL: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6147294