The smell of the shiuli and kaash flowers in the breeze… ummm… of the fall a short time transfers into me, quiet practically, an amazing new sense. The wonderful festival season meant for us Bengalis has again arrived to carve a niche – in other words, a festive epoch of a new calendar year – for much-awaited Bengali fun to begin, and thence end, if it needs to, with Kali Puja after about a month.
I actually love Durga Puja; it is my Durga Puja event. Not only experience it been my one dearest festival, but also a gala fiesta that whenever it brings for myself – as if carefully placed on a golden plate – its share of umpteen pleasures along with having to be given a gregarious hyperbolic whole (no less! ) to all we like-minded souls who come together at the puja mandap to amuse ourselves till late in the night; and, as a result, to get a little witty and simultaneously love and be loved as well.
I have so many vivid memories from my childhood days that it makes me to close my eyes nostalgically and smile widely at even a mere bringing up of this festive occasion, and that it always sees a way to pull on the strings of my heart whenever the truly amazing Durga Puja is around. Besides all else, it is probably the sweet-sweet smell of the puja things emanating from the neighbourhood of wherever I was around is sufficient to make me swoon with pleasure and joy.
Durga Pugna in the probashi bangali set-up is not simply a festival but a long-lasting traditional ovation to a benign Goddess who – speaking in Hindu mythological conditions – fought for eternal good against nasty. This Bengali carnival, in the recent past, has not only happen to be inclusive of everything relating to Bengali caucus and genre, but also, in many ways, of other all-encompassing groups of men and women as well. But that’s a different story though.
Amongst all festival congregations which may have come in vogue from over a time frame here in Hyderabad, I value Sarbojanin Durga Puja & Dussehra Celebrations the most. Why? Because I experienced literally grown up reading to the puja church hymns & mantras, vernacular video clips & jaatras, cymbals & drums, and the almost holy conches blown here in the period when periodic wonders like Dussehra and Diwali return home to get through our collective mind.
I have seen much else, and also seen how all elders and young ones flock merrily to the Puja Pandals for carrying out their pujas and prayers every day, right from the Sashti Puja to Dashami’s sindoor kheyla to Dorpan Bishorjon day. I have an instant connection with this Utsav, an devotion that grew as time passed.
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