Of the many festivals that India has through the year, perhaps none is so beautifully Indian in all the contradictions it easily manages than the Durga Puja - the worship of the goddess Durga.

To begin with, the festival is traditionally and mythically all wrong. The Gods of the Hindu pantheon are in divine hibernation according to the popular belief, between autumn to spring. Hence the preponderance of festivals between late February to November, that is the time the gods are awake!

The Durga Puja comes smack in the middle of autumn and even has a term for it - akal bodhan - or the untimely puja. This break with tradition was initiated by the great Hero-god Rama however, and it provided a great deal of justification. Rama was having trouble finishing off the demon-king Ravana and he performed an out of tradition special puja, to get the Power of the Mahadevi on his side. (See our section on the gods and goddesses for more on the Mahadevi)

Secondly the Puja-festival was a private affair of the martial and landowning classes for a very long time indeed. However it has now become the most community-participant event you can ever hope to see. The sheer scale of energy, organization and exuberance that is let loose all across the Indian State of West Bengal can be matched only by the Mardi Gras. In terms of numbers however, the Mardi Gras will come a poor second. In fact, it is not too much to say that it is the highlight of the social year in Bengal and especially Calcutta, three and a half days of sheer joy, where a drab and declining city is suddenly transformed into Wonderland.

This is fundamentally because of a multitude of Clubs and committees who exist only for the purpose of the four days of the festival. They are in hibernation too for the rest of the year, like the gods apparently. These organizations collect funds, organize the necessary municipal permissions and outsource everything. Traditionally the Puja was a little community affair and the expenses could be managed by donations from local area residents. Nowadays however everything has gone the sponsorship route, as there is just too much to be spent on things that have become customary even if they are not traditional.

Three expenses are major here. Illumination, which is a Calcutta art that deserves more attention. Using tiny light bulbs set up in outline form, the electricians manage to convey the illusion of a cricket match being played, or of a plane taking off, or a fountain spurting. The bulbs are turned off and on in sequence to give the illusion of movement and they were doing it long before there was any computer programming to do so. In fact they still do not use any software that I am aware of. These illuminations also trace out the local buildings in outline.

The second is the pandal which houses the entire set of divine images and provides a space for devotees. It is essentially a bamboo-framework with cloth stretched over it, a tent of sorts. However they have enormous creativity in constructing these structures. The artisans can reproduce a facsimile of any building you care to name in the world with bamboo and clothing - a sort of Cristo the wrapper in reverse. The Taj Mahal, famous temples of India and last year even the Titanic as seen in Cameron's film have been created. Finally there are the images themselves which are nothing but dried clay on a straw and wood skeleton and then painted over to look human. This is a great art form in itself and the real tragedy is that every year all of them are immersed into the waters of the Ganga, when the puja is over. It is the dissolution into the Universe of the Mother, "She Vanishes" as the Devi Mahatmayam says. This ceremony recreates that divine act of transcendence, as well as delivers a valuable lesson on the impermanence of all things no matter how beautiful and dear to ones heart.

But we anticipate ourselves. The images are of the goddess herself, slaying the demon Mahisha, or sometimes depicting the reason for this puja, granting power to Rama. She is usually accompanied by what Bengal hold is her family, the gods Ganesha and Kartikeya who are her sons and the goddesses Laxmi and Saraswati who are supposed to be her daughters - a tradition unique only to Bengal. The reason for the family album ambience is that Durga does not come to Bengal as the Great Mother, but as a daughter visiting her parent's home along with her children. She is regarded as living a hard life all year long in the Himalayan snows and therefore a great deal of fuss about her comfort is made when she comes a-visiting. This sort of intense personal relationship to god is a rather endearing aspect of the religion though in fairness, it does become a bit mawkish at times.

continue>>

Archive