Two branches of my in-laws' extended family take turns to host the family Durga Puja in alternate years. This year it was the turn of the branch to which my wife belongs and the Puja venue was her mama bari, where two brothers and their children and grandchildren live together. Now that I am in Kolkata, this was the first time in around three decades that I was part of the great ritual that stretches over five days (Sasthi to Dashami).
The old extended family is dead in the West, and is dying in India too. But if there is a place where it is taking a good amount of time in rendering an extended swan song - resplendent in ritual that is a mix of endearing tradition and meaningless dos and don'ts - then it is centred around Durga Puja.
The youngest members of the family to grace the Pujas were the one-year-old twins of my wife's niece - a long line of people jostled to take turns to carry and cuddle them. The oldest was the 90-year-old uncle, far gone in dementia, whose endlessly repetitive questions no one seemed to mind.
The second youngest was a three-year-old, totally unselfconscious, who faithfully rendered several stanzas of the rousing Tagore song, Byartho praner abarjana ("Make a bonfire of life's failures"), and would have sung it all if one of the old ladies had not asked him to stop. The occasion was the variety programme, by family members for family members, a highlight of the Pujas in which anything goes.
To this day many recall the skit that our son, then growing up in Delhi, did in the late nineties when he was in middle school. In that skit on Lalu Prasad, our son dwelt on how Laluji chara kha gaye. The most remarkable family-within-family was a threesome - mother, daughter, son-in-law. The old lady sang beautifully; her middle-aged daughter also sang well but was a notch below her; and the grand finale was a professional-level rendering of several numbers on the electric guitar by the son-in-law.
The second oldest member of the family was my wife's eldest aunt - 87, frail but fully alert. A full evening was devoted to honouring her, with a string of people of varying ages reminiscing about her. The precise peg was the publication of her second book, Sri Ramakrishna, Rabindranath and Others. It was doing rather well and the publisher had a few days ago sent a small royalty cheque for the first imprint.
We heard again the familiar story of how her indomitable spirit has carried her through life. How she was married at 16 just after her matriculation exam - against the wishes of her father, who wanted her to go on studying but was overruled by her matriarch mother. Next, how she went on to complete her Bachelor's and Master's, often lying to her in-laws that she was going to visit her parents when she actually headed for her studies. Then how, after a long career as a school teacher, on retiring she took to research, writing and publishing.
Of course, the Pujas cannot be complete without community meals. In late morning, there was prashad, then luchi and subzi for late breakfast, and rounds of tea. On some days, as is the tradition, the main meal was vegetarian. On Navami (the day when animal sacrifices used to take place) night, as is the custom, there was mutton curry. Then, on Bijoya Dashami night, after the family came back from the immersion, there was grand, end-of-season hilsa cooked in mustard.
For the first time since my childhood, I saw food cooked in a tarpaulin-covered courtyard on huge makeshift chullahs and not brought in ready-to-eat by caterers. It was the spirit of the occasion that made us eat so much and still not fall ill.
When it was all over, my wife told me how, on the lorry going with the idols to the Ganga, a niece whose son is now in high school indulged in every conceivable girlish prank - making a hideous noise rubbing balloons, bursting them and confessing it felt so good to behave like an uncontrollable kid.
What remains with me is a melange of sounds - children noisily chasing each other, despite being repeatedly told not to disturb the pundit conducting the puja; Bengali mothers obsessively entreating their children not to run out barefoot in the drizzle, or else thanda lege jabe (you'll catch a cold); and the roll, crackle and beat of the dhak (drums), unchanged through the centuries.
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