Durga Pujas: Great levellers for revellers

NEW DELHI: Just what do the Durga Pujas bring out in us? What are the different ways in which we respond to this festival? Do they bring us face to face with who we are and where we came from?
Despite the regional flavour about it, the pujas breach many barriers — of religion, language and even class. It is a leveller for revellers.
For Euphoria lead singer Palash Sen, whose boyhood days were spent in Connaught Place''s Railway Colony, "The Durga Pujas have got to be the only puja in this country which is not about fasts but fun".
Sen is bursting with pride when he says, "No other community can ensure the participation of so many different kinds of people."
Not just people with Hindu or Bengali names, but a larger cultural diaspora. For writer and filmmaker Ruchir Joshi, who grew up in Kolkata, Durga Puja "is like a carnival in Rio de Janeiro".
"The dhaki''s drumbeat had a hypnotic effect on me and the pandals were places where one could check out the girls," he laughs. It was only later that Joshi was able to read between the lines of the lilting chandipath to understand its religio-cultural significance which left him disappointed.
Today, Joshi is critical of the "massive commercialisation" of the pujas, but admits that he would "hate to be without them."
Exactly, says artist Manu Parekh, who has also experienced Durga Puja as a young artist in Kolkata.
"I refuse to accept that Kolkata is dying or Bengalis are lazy. Their tremendous energy climaxes during the Durga Pujas. A city which sweats itself out all year, drops everything to enjoy itself on these five days," he says. He remembers the days of the Bangla-desh War and the Naxalite movement.
"Those were really strife-torn days in the city, but everything was forgotten for the Durga Pujas," he said.
While the surfacing identity may be a common response, artist Sanjay Bhattacharya mocks the idea of "dressing up in Bengali costumes" for the pujas.
"My Bengali identity is alive and kicking every other day of the year, thank you," he asserts. If his senior colleague, Parekh''s, artist soul stirs looking at sindoor khela, Bhattacharya wants to relive his "Jehadi Art college youth" painting during the puja days.
Says he, "I go to pandals looking for little boys with toy pistols in their hands. But often it clashes with the present, and I come back home disappointed."