My essential Bangaliness compels me to write about this particular, much too cliched to discuss comfortably, yet indispensably important event that is etched on the Bangali calendar. Yes Durga Pujo. All my Pujos have been so drastically different from each other! Every year I have a new set of "Pujo special" emotions. Happiness. Sorrow. Excitement. Boredom. Anticipation. Predictability. All a part of the entire hype. Package deal. It is so surprising that despite what each Kolkatan goes through separately in her/his individual personal space, the collective emotion, Kolkata's emotion, is uniformly consistent every year without fail. It's a single mad uproar of celebration. The ultimate assertion of life, of the vitality of life. And no matter how stressed, how tired, how depressed, angry, sick, even dying, all Kolkatans, and here I have to include the entire non-Bangali section of my city as well, feel that vitality coursing through their veins like a steam engine pounding ahead. Full steam. Full power. Even poverty melts. All children look the same. Happy. Delighted. Diabetics who obey their dietary constraints religiously all year through, cannot but indulge in the regular all-year junk food that suddenly tastes new during those five days. Frenzied? Yes. Bacchic? That too.
This comes way pre-Pujo. But I already feel the energy building up. The unbeatable masses at Gariahat struggling along, pushing-shoving-pushing-trampling their way into shops and miraculously discovering inch-spaces amidst throngs of other equally sweaty, equally smelly shoppers, and screaming their lungs out for one new piece of clothing. A token for Maa. A sari for Thamma. Baba's notun panjabi. Bhai-er t-shirt. Didibhai-er salwar kameez. And this war pleases me. It indicates the stability, the lovely, beautiful, incredible stabilty that life still has. We are all together. All alike. All struggling. Similarly. And our collective happiness gives us strength.
Yes there is the dismal post-Bijoya gloom looming large ahead. But there is also the reassurance of another Pujo. Another attempt at this collective happiness we all strive to achieve, and succeed in acheiving every time. I love my city. And my people. And I love the vitality with which we covet the happiness all our lives.