Lights bloomed everywhere. From street lights to the
LED decorations- the city was dressed in her best. The legs of the crowd made
way for the main view- the puja pandel and the ten-handed epitome of power.
‘This city never stops’- they said, ‘This city walks
on extra energy during festivals’- they never said. The funniest thing about
Kolkata during Durga puja is- you don’t
need to go around searching for the pandel, neither do you need to use the
location-tracker application in your smart phone. Just stand in a crowd, and
they will take you to the pandel, with the push.
Yes, Kolkata people are GPS trackers, when it comes
to pandels, food courts, street shops, and almost everything under the sun.
And yes, we love to eat. And festivals bring with
themselves, not just the feel-good air, but also the permission warrant of not paying a heed to the diet, and
digging into any food and every food that catches the eye. From street food to
restaurants- nothing makes Kolkata
happier than FOOD!
Coming back to Durga puja, the pandels hum in the
beats of the ‘Dhaak’- the best background
score. And that unique smell you find in pandels- mixture of the smoke from
the ‘Dhunuchi’, incense sticks, flowers, fruits- doesn’t it just make you smell
for more? Addictive, isn’t it? And the
good feeling it brings with itself, that happy feeling that leaves a curve on
your lips..
Colours are scattered everywhere. The whole city
dresses up- clothes, shoes, perfumes. I wonder what would my city look like, from over the clouds,
during a festival- a haphazard pattern
painted beautifully, or a colour palate that just slipped off a painter’s hand,
and left an abstract scene, too mesmerising to describe.. WHO KNOWS..
But as Peter Parker says, “with great power comes
great responsibility”, we Kolkatans say, with great happiness come Problems. Accidents,
traffic jams, problems in parking cars, drains suffocating with garbage- and
the listless problems.
But then as the Kolkata attitude says, ‘ Problems
will come and go infinite times a year, but festivals come only once.’ The rest of the year is the WAIT.
Its only the festival time, when a school girl can
give a damn to her homework, an office-going dad can stop worrying about his
boring working-desk and threatening deadlines, a housewife mom can forget about
pondering over what to cook for the breakfast, and a college-goer need not bunk
classes to hang out with his friends. The best time of the year, it is. Happiness brims out of faces, and the
reason is common!
Kolkata, being the home of a lot of communities,
tastes all festivals- from Ganesh chaturthi to Christmas, From Durga puja to
Eid. And, we, the foodie Kolkatans, the fun-loving Kolkatans, only need an
excuse to celebrate- drop studies, drop
work, and let down our hair.
But then,
Life is all
about CELEBRATING, isn’t
it ??
