Pujooooo

Dear "people who make me happy",


Durga Puja is a few blocks away and I can't stop feeling festive even though the beastly half yearlies are going on. 


Durga Puja for me is: 

• Waking up one to the intoxicating fragrance of shiuli phool.
• Doing the rounds of Pujor bajar ( shopping for the pujas ) and asking the "Pujor Bajar sesh?" question to almost everyone I cross paths with. 
• Craving for months to wake up to a sunny Autumn morning with the sky sketched in white
• rolling in bed to the mellifluous chants of Mahalaya, baba shouting to me "shuru hoye geche; wake up" (It's started wake up!)
• Wearing a new dress everday for those 4 days. 
• pandal-hopping till I cross my 100 pandals mark, and not even complaining about the shoe bite.
• Listening to the dhakis beat and dancing along to it.
• the unlimited paani puri and the little detours to look for a shop selling mountain dew to boost me up for the long day ahead. 
• The countdown to mahalaya, the star ananda superstar megastar, the annual meetings with ISHA
• The traditional bengali food - you know the shorshe ilish, potol chingri and all.
• Durga Puja for me is a reminder that you don't have to pour yourself into books, tuitions, and stupid exams for four whole days. Every year. ( class 11 makes you say these things. I kid not.)  That every woman looks stunning on Dashami after a vermillion bath and that if you go touch the feet of your elders you get 50 ruppee notes that end up to be a pocketful of money.

Here's sharing you a picture of last year's pujo, this was some pandal at kakurgachi.

Durga Puja '10

Watching every pandal with a different theme, pandals so awesome that you stand in awe and wonder how the hell do they do these in such short a time. 

There are the traditional pandals which stick to the very conservative pattern they have been following for years, big pandals, the thakur exactly the same each year. It's this similarity that make them even more special. 

Then there are the pandals which bring new things, new ideas, mind boggling ones that make you go wow. How in a few months time a total replica of the Egyptian pyramids go up, we have no idea...all we do is stand in queues for hours to catch a glimpse of the creation.

Hope you have an awesome puja as I myself travelling my way through Ladakh. It will be a good one. :) 

Till then, in the words of my grandmother, Dugga Dugga.

SAM B