Legend has it that Mahisasur, the Buffalo demon, became invincible and started ravaging the entire world. Eventually killing people lost its allure and he began desiring to uproot all the Gods too. The Gods combined their powers to create the beautiful Durga, had her riding a tiger, and in each of her ten hands they placed a different weapon with which she successfully overpowered Mahisasur and saved the material and spiritual world.
The Durga Puja is the biggest and most important religious festival in the Bengali calendar, during which prayers and offerings are made. No doubt, many of the people who attend her Puja are devout. But there are other motivations, one of which is to show off the finest of saris and jewellery. Much preening was going on tonight! As Trishna Guha Roy writes:
"A feeling of festivity pervades the whole atmosphere as people get busier by the day buying clothes, buying jewellery, buying cars, just buying, buying, buying. Huge colourful banners, fabulous-sounding discounts and festive offers are the order of the day."
When my friend was a teenager in London and the main London Durga Puja was in Belsize Park, she and her friends used the excuse of the festival to take 5 days off school (the length of the festival). Then, in all their Indian finery, they would sneak out of Puja to watch films in the Screen on the Green and drink shandy in the nearby pubs. Now she has a 3 year old child of her own and we wonder what tricks he will get up to during Puja when he is older!
Though we are Bengali, my family never celebrated Puja when I was growing up. My father is Brahmo Samaj - a religious and social movement founded in 1828 by Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Roy's movement rejected the strict Hindu social system of castes, and believed all people, regardless of caste, religion and gender, had equal rights. Brahmoism rejects idol worship, believing no created object can be worshipped as God, of which there is only one. It also has no use for notions of karma (causal effects of past deeds), no faith in incarnations, and does not insist on belief in rebirth.
My mother is a traditional Hindu, but says she has always hated Pujas for the preening and showing off that goes on. She prefers to practise in private, and has a tiny Kali altar taking up one shelf of her dresser cabinet.
And me? Well, my parents sent me to Catholic school and refused to state my religion on the school's application form, saying "She'll decide when she's old enough." When I did become "old enough" I decided I had more faith than religion, which is still the case today.
After the Puja tonight they served everyone luchi (a wheat puri), khichuri (a curried rice, potato, cauliflower and lentil stew), poppadom, lime pickle and mango chutney.
Related link:
+ Triumph of the Devi
Other links today:
+ The rise of the adultescent. This is me (well, not the middle-aged part)!
+ But this is not me at all! (Reg. req)
+ The Mona Lisa experience. "She's one of the ugliest women in the world!"
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