By Patricia Lee Sharpe
For nearly two weeks, day and night, Bengalis have been paying homage to Durga their favorite goddess. But now her effigies have been carried, carted or trucked from their places of honor to be tossed or toppled into the Houghly River. Sic transit gloria. All is transient. Calcutta/Kolkata will return to hyper-crowded, high-energy normality, until the next puja, in honor of Kali or Manasa or Kartik or Saraswati or Ganesh or—the roster of honorees
is practically countless. Calcutta is almost always preparing for or recovering from one puja or another, as I discovered on Day One, for me, in the vibrant city that turned from Calcutta to Kolkata while I was living there.
Kartik
En route from the airport, I found myself being driven down a street along which everyone in sight seemed to have something to do with making effigies. In open-front shop after shop, artisans were engaged in what turned out to be a four-part process. (1) Make a humanoid armature of bamboo strips. (2) Flesh it out with straw. (3) Cover it with papier mache. (4) Paint it flamboyantly.
Kartik puja was days away, it seemed, and I had a decision to make. Kartik, like the more widely known Ganesha, is a son of the Hindu god Shiva and his wife Parvati. One of his modern duties is to serve as the god (eg patron saint) of mechanics and engineers. I, as in-coming supervisor of team that included drivers, mechanics, audio-visual specialists and computer systems operators, had to say yea or nay to the business of setting up an image of Kartik in our garage. “Is it customary?” I asked. The answer was “Yes.” So Kartik was duly installed, with a garland of marigolds around his neck. Who wanted accidents or computer crashes over the next 12 months? What’s more, if we could have Kartik in the garage, we could have a Christmas tree in the lobby when December rolled around. Eid treats, in turn, would also be enjoyed by all, Muslim or not. Hurrah for festivals!
Durga
Night and day, every Durga in the city gleamed and glittered, her lion-mount standing staunchly beside her or serving as a throne. Spear or bladed weapon in one of her ten arms, ready to kill the demon Mahisha, she embodies the fierce spirit in the superficially languid Bengali babu. People in the U.S. brave traffic jams to see houses illuminated extravagantly for Christmas (or, in Santa Fe, they throng traditional neighborhoods to see streets and housetops lined with farolitas on Christmas eve). People in Kolkata feel absolutely compelled to spend an evening enjoying and/or judging as many Durga installations as possible. The city is one big mob scene, a press of men, women and children pushing through the streets and often contending with cars that nudge them, horns honking, to make way for those determined to gape without having to mingle with the common folk. The next day in the office the one-uppers and critics are busily at it. “Did you see this one?” “Did you see that one?”
So it went, day after day, and somewhere in the madness no doubt there were those who approached Durga in a spirit of reverence.
Saraswati
The goddess Saraswati also has her puja in Calcutta. I knew this, but hadn't call it actively called to mind when I returned a few winters ago to attend the Dover Lane music festival aka conference, a sequence of all night sessions (from 9 pm to 6 am) of Indian classical music that's performed by the top exemplars as well as the best up-and-comings. After three nights of going to and returning from the venue either by taxi or with friends, I decided one morning to walk back to my pied-à-terre, a distance of two or three miles. Since I’m not normally a greet-the-sun person, I always forget how enchanting those earliest moments of day can be, that soft gray light that’s peculiar to dawn, the subtlety of a sunless shadowless world. That morning, suffused with music, strolling along a cracked and heaving sidewalk in a still transfixed mood, I kept encountering chaiwalas. They were heating water over charcoal to brew the preferred wake up beverage for day laborers, who sipped their milky tea under the banyan trees that line many old Calcutta lanes. Of course, everyone greeted me and I responded. I accepted more than one free cup of tea, too. It was lovely. Then I came to the first intersection—and there she was: glorious Saraswati, with her vina, playing celestial music. All the way back to the place where I was staying, I was handed off by one Saraswati to another, as trams started moving and the streets got peopled and Calcutta eased languidly into a new working day. Needless to say, the music festival had opened with devotions to Saraswati.
Manasa
Not all puja days are sacred to the goddesses of classic Hinduism. Some deities are rooted in folk belief. Such is the snake goddess Manasa, whose image is frequently shaped in clay by village potters in the Kolkata hinterland. Other village artisans devote themselves to Durga as well. One village is famous for creating gods, goddesses and other figures by the ancient lost wax process, which is how the little Durga statue I present here was created. Meanwhile, back in Kolkata, other artists use modern media and modern techniques to express their reverence for Durga, as with the charming decorative tile I’ve also reproduced. It was made by a young man in art school. Here in Santa Fe images of the Virgin of Guadalupe appear everywhere—on alters, on coffee mugs, on tee shirts. The equivalent in Kolkata is Durga. She’s inescapable.