Deity of Light: How Durga Puja in Kolkata is an inclusive celebration based on its culture of tolerance

Swarna Chitrakar, a Muslim patachitra painter from Pingla, West Midnapur along with her family members have painted Hindu gods to decorate the pandal in South Kolkata, this year. (Source: Express photo by Subham Dutta)

Of the many ways residents of West Bengal — not all of them Bengali — have pushed back against the very deliberate attempt to “religionise” Durga Puja this year, this one’s my favourite. Self-aware, witty and accessible, it calls upon celebrants to share photos as they dig into their pujo food of choice. Egg rolls, of course, but also biryani and chaap and momos and all the other junk food that are taken off eat-sparingly-or-avoid lists by the five days of Pujo. Just hashtag them #SelfieWithNonVeg and let them loose on social media to show those upcountry bumpkins what’s what.

It’s the kind of irreverence that, paradoxical as it seems, is the hallmark of the Durga Puja in Kolkata. Piety levels may run high during the ritual anjali on Ashtami and even the most agnostic of people can be moved by the climactic Shandhi Puja, when the goddess slays the demon according to legend, but, for the most part, Puja – so universal is its resonance that the mention of the deity is optional — is a feeling.

It glides in with the light. No matter where the Kolkata native is in the world, chances are, come September-October, she will look up into the rain-washed sky and perceive a shift in the angle of the rays of the sun. The skies should be the cerulean blue that evokes poetry in the plains of Bengal but, even if they are overcast, her mind’s eye will see cotton-candy clouds, kash phool (Saccharum spontaneum) and an elusive clarity in the air, making for sharper shadows and sudden twilights. “Pujo-pujo alo,” is how she describes it, evocative in an almost onomatopoeic way.

But there’s also pujo-pujo gondho (fragrance), a ubiquitous mix, including but not limited to the chhatim (a variety of the flowering alstonia or dogbane much favoured by city planners), dhuno (the bug-beating evening incense that still smoulders in many Bengali households), diesel fumes, pujo-shopping perspiration and the smell of shallow-frying. Undercutting it all, from somewhere, comes a whiff of freshness, even astringency, a hint that even in this erstwhile swampland, winter is coming.

Parse as I may the sights and sounds of puja — the phantasmagoric pandals at every street corner, the dhakis’ electrifying warm-ups, the kilometre-long lighting installations, the rhythmic clangs of the kanshor-ghonta, the mesmeric dance of the lamps, the practised ululations — it’s still hard to capture the potent cocktail built up by anticipation, excitement, excess and an unstated, ever-present sense of anything-goes-for-five-days. In keeping with the ethos of the Durga story (the goddess is visiting her parents and they try to keep her from returning to her drug-taking, tandav-dancing husband by splashing out on the most tempting of food and worship), pujo, in conservative Kolkata, is licence to push boundaries, ignore deadlines, dabble with the dangerous. Live a little. Or a lot. Dress up. Hang out. Flirt. Date. Dine out. Stay away. Sleep over. All in plain sight. Oh, the joy.

The biggest enabler of these coveted freedoms, of course, is the community puja. As special as the family pujas continue to be five or six centuries after coming into being, Kolkata is essentially synonymous with the baroari pujo, funded and run by residents of a locality or, in recent years, an apartment complex. Everyone’s invited and everyone’s expected to pitch in, be it with donations or legwork or the actual pujo prep. As multiple benefactors of the pujo-sanctioned blind eye will confess, nothing quite breaks the ice like getting the malfunctioning music system going or knocking on para doors together to distribute bhog. Or sneaking away from the unofficial chaperones to do the rounds of other pandals, in the north of the city or the south, comparing notes on the mutton rolls at Mohammed Ali Park and the phuchka at Samaj Shebi.

Because the Kolkata puja is always about the street, its avenues and bylanes a portal that, for five nights only, transports all celebrants into wonderland. The traffic snarls untangle themselves, the bamboo barricades create effective walkways, the food stalls do brisk business. Romance writes itself over the mangshor chop at Mitra Cafe, hearts break with a bite of the chicken cutlet at Campari. The fare can be substandard — quality control is hard when quantities are flying off the shelves — but few complain because, let’s admit it, all eyes are bedazzled by the magic dust sprinkled around the city. At Arsalan, the biryani runs out by midnight but the takers still line up, at Zeeshan, they smile and offer the sparkly teenagers onion rolls.

As the hours roll by and the Ferris wheels slow down, the streets still remain awash in light art, illuminating the way back home for stragglers and reluctants. It keeps away the predators who stalk the city at night, cocooning the last revellers in a surreal swirl of light and dust. This city of 14 million reports little crime over Puja, few cases of sexual harassment. Little boys lost at the pandal return to their anxious parents, voices are raised only when someone awestruck by the chandeliers holds up the queue.

For five days, every year, the city marches to the beat of a different dhaki. This year, it will need to draw even deeper on its culture of tolerance and respect to put together an inclusive celebration that offers zero room to animosity and hate. The world is watching Kolkata, and the city knows and will rise again.