Durga Puja is perhaps best described as the ‘Big Momma of Festivals’ for Hindus in West Bengal, East Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, UP and Bengali Hindus all over the world. For the uninitiated (which to some extent, includes myself), it is a five day festival celebrated from the sixth to tenth day of the waxing moon in the month of ‘Ashwin’, which is the sixth month in the Bengali calendar. (wikipedia rocks!!)

Having only heard about the magnificient ‘puja’ as i grew up in diasaporic Dubai, i’ve always wanted to find out for myself what the fuss was really all about – would i go hohum? or would i go holymomma!!?

Flew into Kolkata on Friday, irritably hungover from an unpleasent night of festivities and the first thing i did was take a ride down to ‘Kumortuli’. Now, this place is just fascinating !!! It is a traditionally potters’ quarter in northern Kolkata that supplies clay idols of Hindu gods and goddesses. Artisans bring soil from brothel house as a ritual and then begin the intricate job of crafting the mother goddess. (will try and find out exactly what the story behind this is in a later post) I know that yáll aren’t very fond of reading but it’s really too fascinating to stop :) The popular writer Sunil Gangopadhyay has narrated the traditional magic of this place from his child-hood days (the forties of the last century):

“In those days, instead of buying the idols from the market at Kumortuli, families invited the kumor or artisan home to stay as a house guest weeks before the Puja, during which time he sculpted the idol. The idol at our Puja was known for its magnificent size. It used to be over 10 feet tall. Every morning as the kumor started his work, we children gathered around him and gaped in awe as he gradually turned a fistful of straw and a huge mass of clay into a perfectly formed, larger-than-life figure. And then came the most intriguing part — the painting of the third eye of the goddess. The artisan would sit in meditation sometimes for hours and then suddenly in one swift stroke of his paint brush, it would be done.”