Devotees’ juggernaut rolls on despite coronavirus scare, but Kolkata misses its melas and jatras

KOLKATA: Rath er mela bosechhe Rath talay…the famous song by Sanat Singha seemed from another world on Tuesday as Ratha Yatra was observed in the city and districts without familiar sights and smells. Be it the chariots of Lord Jagannath and his siblings that stood still, the missing hullabaloo at the jatra para of Chitpore and around khuti/kathamo puja by community Durga Puja organisers or the lack of makeshift shacks selling fried papads and jilipi, this year’s Ratha Yatra was shorn of everything.
These are Covid times and keeping within the frame of the new normal, temples invoked the three deities while traditional pujas were held following norms, but without public participation. Children were not seen on the streets or even inside housing complexes pulling the wooden tiny rathas with earthen idols sitting on their decks. Only the jewellery stores in the city sounded slightly happy at the end of the day as they saw encouraging footfalls throughout the day because of Ratha Yatra offers.

Chitpore wore a deserted look with most jatra pala companies keeping their doors shut. Monks and sevaks at Iskcon Kolkata cradled the deities from the first floor and carried them to the ground floor where a makeshift Gundicha temple had been made for the deities. “Chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, who is always present at the Ratha Yatra inauguration, sent sweets and uttariya for the deities. We kept the door locked and could not distribute mahaprasad this time,” rued the spokesperson Radharaman Das. At Mayapur too, gates were locked and monks with priests pulled the rathas inside the campus without public participation.
The 600-year-old Mahesh and 300-year-old Guptipara rathas also stood still, though pujas happened behind closed doors without distribution of prasad.
(Inputs from Kamalendu Bhadra, Suman Chakraborty and Falguni Banerjee)