The Bengali Art of Growing Up

Through years of observation, I’ve come to realize that a Bengali and a non-Bengali perceive and experience society and culture in starkly different ways. Why? I’ve asked this question several times, and the answer, in one way or another, seems to be rooted in the soul of Kolkata. The way this city lives and breathes is a curious case in itself. So much so, that we Bengalis have quite the reputation. You can take the Bengali out of Kolkata but you cannot take Kolkata out of the Bengali. My personal opinion, which by all likelihood could be different from others’, is that we are exactly how we’ve been stereotyped. For example, Bengali children genuinely spend a large portion of their childhoods preparing for the war that others, lovingly, call life. Even before we’ve taken our first steps, the trajectories of our lives for the next 20-odd years have already been decided. A lot of times, children get the luxury of choosing what they’d like to be the best at, and a lot of times they don’t, but what remains constant is the Bengali obsession with being the best. As a 6-year-old, my week was nothing short of torture. I was attending school, running to a Bharatanatyam class from there, going to a yoga class after that, rushing home in time for my tuitions, attending theatre and painting classes over the weekend; and since the sports quota was empty, badminton wiggled its way in. Confession: forget about being the best, I wasn’t even good at badminton. I suppose a lot of Bengalis would relate to the compulsive need to over-compensate for not being the ‘best’ at something which, in the larger scheme of things, holds little priority in your life.

Children are not cognizant of the concept of emotional bankruptcy or extreme physical exhaustion. And even if they do understand, they surely cannot articulate it like an adult. Hence, by default, they wait for festivals with bated breath. As a Bengali kid myself, I can affirm: Durga Pujo is when all our wishes come true. Firstly, we’re not talking about a day or two of celebrations; we’re talking about 10 days of pure festive indulgence. Secondly, to savour them to the best of our abilities, every family starts preparing at least 3 months in advance. What are these preparations, you ask? Shopping! If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a calculated approach to mindless shopping, just observe your closest Bengali family panicking about not having shopped enough for Pujo. On a side note, it amuses me when people underestimate just how competitive Bengali women can get. If their approach to child-nurturing didn’t paint the picture, let me tell you about how they shop. When the best malls in Kolkata announce their whopping ‘Pujo Discounts’, expect to find every inch filled with overenthusiastic shoppers; mostly women. Good luck finding something you like and not having that snatched from your hand in the next instant because someone (mostly a vocal lady) apparently ‘saw it first’. Thirdly, as children, there will always be an element of surprise because we’re never included in the preparations. However, as I think back, I can completely understand what people mean by festivities being for the youth, and I’ll tell you why.

I did not grow up in Kolkata for the most part. My childhood was largely spent in Hyderabad along with a mention-worthy stint in Jamshedpur. In Jamshedpur, we lived in Tata Colony where the predominant residents were all Bengalis; hence, not going to Kolkata during Durga Pujo was unthinkable. From Jamshedpur, we reserved our seats in the Shatabdi chair-car which dropped us off at Howrah/Sealdah railway station in a couple of hours. Howrah station, to the unsuspecting passenger, is a chaotic medley of sounds and smells that make you think you know where they’re coming from, but you probably don’t. That experience is an acquired taste. At home, children and adults are separated whereupon each finally starts their journey of recuperation. I realized much later in life that meeting your relatives for a short span of time, especially during the Pujos, did not look or feel the same as living together in proximity. I moved to Kolkata, for good, during my high-school years which gave me the space to make the aforementioned comparison. The hospitality and the eagerness to finally embrace the people you mostly wrote letters to, was an elite experience.

Every Durga Pujo, as kids, all of us received somewhere between six and ten pairs of new clothes. Mostly eight, if I recall correctly. A ‘day’ pair and a ‘night’ pair for each of the last four days. It sounds excessive now, but back then, it was just how Pujo worked. Technically, Pujo is ten days long, but for us, the real celebrations began on Shoshti, the sixth day. For the next two or three nights, we would book two of the biggest cars we could find (one for the children and the other, for the adults) and go ‘pandal-hopping’ till the wee hours of the morning. A pandal is a temporary monument-like structure made with bamboo, wood and cloth built to house the idol of Maa Durga. However, that description really doesn't do the pandals justice. Most of them were/are massive and beyond stunning. Artisans come to Kolkata from different parts of Bengal and spend weeks, sometimes months, building them. Ranking the top 10 pandals from the hundreds has remained the city’s tradition. Every year, the competitive pandals (usually the ones with a mind-boggling budget) pick and announce a theme well in advance, that puts them in the public eye. From that point onwards, they work towards executing that theme in the most artistic way imaginable. To a kid or anyone actually, the concept is fascinating. Every pandal, in their quest to be the best, creates a magnificent wonder to the onlookers.

But as kids, honestly, we didn't care much about any of that. We were all too busy getting dressed. We'd spend an unreasonable amount of time deciding which ‘pair’ to wear, then fight over who was sitting next to whom in the cars where someone would inevitably complain about the music while someone else took over the aux. The latest Hindi and English songs would be playing from a mixtape we had painstakingly curated; everyone would be talking over everyone else, and we'd somehow still think we were all having a perfectly normal conversation. We'd go for a ‘fancy’ dinner and then, finally, start with the nightly ritual. We usually had VIP passes for the bigger pujas (and no, VIP didn't mean anyone treated us like VIPs); it just meant that the crowd was slightly less unbearable. At every pandal, we took an absurd number of photographs because digital cameras were the currency of the day (the time when Sony had launched their cameras in funky colors.) We ate phuchka, rolls, chowmein, kebabs, biryani, ice-cream and pretty much anything else we could find at the hundreds of food stalls that were everywhere during Pujo. We'd walk for hours, complain that our feet hurt, swear we were tired and then immediately decide we had to visit one more pandal. We’d reach home after 4:00 AM and drop on our beds with our hearts, and stomachs, full. We were exhausted but gladly so.

Now, at thirty, I sometimes wonder when that stopped being my Pujo. I genuinely can't remember. Maybe it was the age difference between all of us cousins where we were all growing up at different rates; maybe everyone slowly got older, and life became busier. Maybe friends started becoming family, and family started becoming something we had to schedule around. Or maybe we just all grew up! There is something about being a child that makes celebrations easier. You don't question whether you're happy, you don't think about what is missing, you don't worry about the next morning; you just put on your new clothes and let yourself enjoy the moment. I think that is why Pujo remains so important to us Bengalis, even as we get older. We may celebrate it differently now; we may not spend all night pandal-hopping or come home at 4 in the morning smelling of street food and perfume but somewhere in those ten days, we relive our childhoods. Pujo was all about the new clothes, those childish banters, grooving to the ‘cool’ music, the amazing food, the photographs, those ridiculously long nights when we didn't want them to end and when family were the only people who truly mattered; and a big part of it, will always be just that. This is why I say, Durga Pujo will always be a comforting place for all of us overworked, exhausted children who need a few days every year, to become a child all over again.