Durga Puja - Missing Home !!!

For all Bongs (Bengalis to the world), Durga Puja is not only an annual ritual, when you want to spend time with your dear friends and relatives, but also a celebration of new. People used to paint their houses, buy new utensils and clothes before the Puja. The last one is still prevalent, but I think its mostly now a days another routine excuse to visit South City Mall or Forum in Calcutta to buy some more clothes, which anyways we buy year round. But for Bongs who are not staying in Calcutta or other Metropolis in India or abroad, to the Bongs from rural Bengal Puja is still the sole occasion for them to buy new clothes for them and their families and repair their houses, if needed.

Critics often mention that urban Bongs are slowly diffusing the real celebration of the Puja in their so-called busy schedule of life and night-life. It seems, they spend these five days of the Puja in the same manner they will spend any other weekends, when they get time to hangout with friends or family. They might add that Puja comes and goes almost perfunctorily in the lives of these Bongs. I am not sure how and what to reply to these critics and intellectual stalwarts. But one thing which I feel is that time changes at its own pace so does people. Durga Puja has always been special to people of India especially to us who are acclaimed as Bongs and will continue to do so for times to come. We celebrate Puja all over the world now. Wherever Bongs have spread, Puja has spread too.

For instance, many of us still awaits the publication of the annual 'Pujabarshiki', which is a collection of new novels, stories and poems written by noted authors and poets of contemporary Bengali literature. Puja is a celebration of new, so this collection of publications includes most of the new writings by these authors. There used to be similar craze with the music industry as well. Before Puja there were several new albums from famous singers and music directors of different genre, that were launched in order to mark the occasion.

Coming back to Pujabarshikis, we still buy them online from abroad and try to finish them up before the publication of the next years' version. Although some of us are shameless enough to not been able to finish the last year's publication, but still will be eager to buy the new edition with new stories. To us it is a passion, a stimulus to joy and celebration named 'Durga Puja'. I am not sure whether there is any parallel to this same among any other over the world, but if it is there should be handful of events like this which has this enduring impression among us which makes these five days of the year leave us enough joy and ecstasy for the remaining 360 days of the year to wait for the next event.


For me Puja has always been very special. We always used to go to our ancestral home in Matiari, Nadia where we still manage to celebrate our own puja. Unlike the Pujas in Calcutta, the Pujas celebrated at home are vastly different. Here the rituals are the main attraction and we need to work for organizing those. Since childhood we have been trained to participate in different rituals starting from ornamentation of the deity, before the day of reception, to de-ornamentation on the day of immersion. Durga Puja also marks the gathering of our entire family and close relatives at our ancestral home. These seven days we stay as a unit, share our lives and important events that happened through. Since most of us don't get much time to finally meet up in person throughout most of the year to follow, so Puja is an unique opportunity to share our lives with each other. Even at this age of emails and cellphones you will be amazed to learn how much we missed to communicate to one another about our day to day life.

Now, for the last 4 years I have been in USA for my PHD, I have missed this occasion to visit home. One cannot imagine how much I sulk and miss in these four days over here while my entire family celebrates Puja as usual. They miss me too, but I miss them the most.