Devangshu Datta: Bliss to be in Delhi during pujas

VIEWPOINT

Newsprint evokes a Pavlovian response in me; it gets the bowels moving. From the time I was rising six or so, the morning act of elimination has always been linked to scanning the headlines.

As in most middle-class Indian households, the loo was the only private place in our modest home. Provided you didn't spend too long inside and clog up the queue, you could read in peace without being bothered by parents or siblings. In this respect, the Internet is really no substitute. Later on, travelling through the ice-bound and TP-less expanse of the Soviet Union, I learnt another use for newsprint!

Failing availability of a newspaper, I will read anything while "reigning over China". Reading is my home remedy for constipation. My father used this habit to ensure I gained fluency in Sanskrit. He would take away the newspaper and hand me a Sanskrit book instead. As a result, I learnt masses of the Bhagavad Gita and the Chandi Mangal along with bits of Shakuntala and Meghdoot--all in 5-minute chunks.

That was when I discovered that the tradition of the Mother Goddess meant more than several days of continuously blaring loudspeakers, lots of street food, massive crowds and creatively decorated pandals and images.

Prior to that, I had hated the annual advent of the Goddess. It meant two months of toughs collecting subscriptions, followed by seven days of blaring loudspeakers (this was decades before the concept of noise pollution) and the aforementioned thugs marching around smashed out of their skulls.

The Chandi Mangal never played at Calcutta pandal loudspeakers; it was always the same three hit songs. The worst thing was that the Calcutta newspapers always took several days off. That meant at least one bout of minor constipation before the system adjusted to the lack of "roughage".

I did love the street food and I liked visiting the pujas at the stately homes of the Calcutta zamindars, who started the tradition. I also loved Puja in our ancestral house at Silchar. It was quiet, it was peaceful; there were no crowds. My great-aunt would pull out the traditional jewellery and saris for Debi and put awesome amounts of food on the table.

My attitude to Debi changed once I hit my teens and graduated to becoming one of the local toughs. I learnt about the joys of skimming "chanda" (subscription) off the top and realised that there was much point to a festival where boys and girls could mingle unsupervised without social censure. Sadly, the girls in 1970s Calcutta guarded their virtue zealously but at least you got a chance to chat them up.

My attitude changed again when I became a Delhi resident. Bengalis outside their normal habitat are ferociously addicted to their "kulchar". "Chitto Park" revels in its movie shows, its jatra (street theatre) performances and lately, its Bangla rock-fests. Food, of course, remains an integral part of the experience, as indeed does substance abuse.

The Prabashi (expatriate) pujas collect subscription by invitation rather than through the simpler Calcutta method of sending goons to make threats. Much more than in Calcutta, the uncommitted "Bong" is a much-wooed asset in the scheme of Prabashi pujas.

There is an old saying that if there are three Bengalis, they will form two political parties.

Delhi has multitudes of Bengali residents and there is desperate jockeying for positions in the multitude of Puja committees. (I wonder if chanda is skimmed off the top?)

My first year in Delhi, I was approached by no less than three different Puja committees to join their respective gangs. I hid behind my Brahmo heritage and did a refusenik. But I did go for the Ritwik Ghatak festival and I watched the jatras. There's no hassle with noise pollution if you take care not to live in a Bengali-dominated area. And best of all, the Delhi newspapers don't shut down, so neither do my bowels.