Festive Times
To many more years of clashing dates and running late, of torn shoe straps and dreaded traffic traps, pink dresses and letdown tresses, missing friends and catching trends: I raise a margarita with a straw!
~
We were in class 11 when we started going out pandalhopping together. The first year, I wasn't in the city during Durga Pujo, so my turn came next year, when we were in class 12. I remember the frenzied planning involved- renting a car, chipping in the money, deciding a place to eat (and eventually not finding seats there), picking the outfits and so on. I remember trying to apply nail polish the day before and making a mess and frantically calling up friends (on the landline) for help. I remember people losing their ways on the perfectly straight road between Carmel High and JU Gate 4. And I remember the miles and miles of walking, in spite of the car, and getting foot sore from all the new fancy shoes and having to shop for bandaid in between pandals. I remember the group-hunt for a cobbler because one girl tore her shoe straps (it became quite a habit, over the years). I remember the stop for ice-creams and green coconut at Selimpur Pally. The beginnings of tradition.
By the time the next Pujo came round, we were in college. Different colleges, different subjects, different schedules. And naturally, more frenzied planning. I remember it rained that Shasthi while we were trapped inside a pandal ironically designed to create an underwater theme. I remember the aching disappointment when one of us left early to join her college friends for lunch. More pujos came and went. There were more obsessed planning. More lonely return home with crowded buses and auto-rickshaws tripling their prices. I guess we would call that peak-pricing now. Returning home in the evening was a nightmare, but it couldn't dampen the excitement of the day.
And the streets of the city resonated with the pulsating rhythm of the dhaak mingling with the latest Bollywood musical hits.
~
We left college. Some left the city. Some left the country. Whatsapp groups happened, and thank Ma Durga for that, because it used to be insane fixing dates before group chat was invented because nobody ever agreed on a single date and I spent all my time and prepaid value calling up everyone again and again.
Sometimes as we walked from pandal to pandal in the scorching sun or the drizzling rain that didn't seem to matter that much, not then when we were younger, we would run into other old, familiar faces, half-remembered faces, vaguely recognized faces with forgotten names, and our littler reunion would melt into many reunions, for that was what the season was. The Goddess had come home, after all.
Over the years there was less of pandalhopping, and more of catching up to do. But the spirit of the meeting was unmistakably the same. Though we met at other times during the year, the pujo meeting remained special. We had come, some of us before time and waiting, some of us inexplicably and inevitably late, in our new Pujo clothes. Now, with android phones and social media, photographic history was easier to document, but even though there were missing faces, those photographs were also about the people who hadn't been able to make it, for the meetings were always about the whole group.
The first year we had lunch together, we managed with a budget of less thank Rs.100 per person. And it was an AC restuarant with comfortable seating and everything. Feels surreal now when I think about it.
Well, I don't think this post has any points to make except my nostalgic rambling. One year I wrote a version of Keats' 'To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent' about our Pujo outing . Can't find the damn notebook anywhere. Another year three of us took a long walk from Gariahat to Jadavpur in the evening, and then suddenly spotting a homebound bus, two of us jumped onboard without even saying goodbye to the third. And so the poor girl turned back in the middle of a conversation to find us gone. Another year we did the same walk with someone doing a loop version of 'ET Go Home' in an operatic strain.
Somehow, over the years, things have become easier. I still dress up, but I don't plan it for months anymore. We meet less often than we did before, but there's no pressure to get the most out of each meeting. Friends still turn up late, go missing, and we still give them grief for it, because it's tradition, and because we miss them. But on the whole, it has become so much easier to be ourselves, with ourselves. Perhaps this is called growing up. Or perhaps this is how we ease into our old relationships.
Autumn in Bengal is a golden season, despite the rain or the heat or the crowd. My memories of these outings will remain forever golden too. To my dear old friends who are all so strange, I wouldn't exchange you for anything.
Shubho Bijaya and Happy Dussera. May we all find the spirit of sweetness and goodwill in the days to come.
If you liked this, you might also enjoy this:
Anniversariesl
🍸
~
We were in class 11 when we started going out pandalhopping together. The first year, I wasn't in the city during Durga Pujo, so my turn came next year, when we were in class 12. I remember the frenzied planning involved- renting a car, chipping in the money, deciding a place to eat (and eventually not finding seats there), picking the outfits and so on. I remember trying to apply nail polish the day before and making a mess and frantically calling up friends (on the landline) for help. I remember people losing their ways on the perfectly straight road between Carmel High and JU Gate 4. And I remember the miles and miles of walking, in spite of the car, and getting foot sore from all the new fancy shoes and having to shop for bandaid in between pandals. I remember the group-hunt for a cobbler because one girl tore her shoe straps (it became quite a habit, over the years). I remember the stop for ice-creams and green coconut at Selimpur Pally. The beginnings of tradition.
By the time the next Pujo came round, we were in college. Different colleges, different subjects, different schedules. And naturally, more frenzied planning. I remember it rained that Shasthi while we were trapped inside a pandal ironically designed to create an underwater theme. I remember the aching disappointment when one of us left early to join her college friends for lunch. More pujos came and went. There were more obsessed planning. More lonely return home with crowded buses and auto-rickshaws tripling their prices. I guess we would call that peak-pricing now. Returning home in the evening was a nightmare, but it couldn't dampen the excitement of the day.
And the streets of the city resonated with the pulsating rhythm of the dhaak mingling with the latest Bollywood musical hits.
~
We left college. Some left the city. Some left the country. Whatsapp groups happened, and thank Ma Durga for that, because it used to be insane fixing dates before group chat was invented because nobody ever agreed on a single date and I spent all my time and prepaid value calling up everyone again and again.
Sometimes as we walked from pandal to pandal in the scorching sun or the drizzling rain that didn't seem to matter that much, not then when we were younger, we would run into other old, familiar faces, half-remembered faces, vaguely recognized faces with forgotten names, and our littler reunion would melt into many reunions, for that was what the season was. The Goddess had come home, after all.
Over the years there was less of pandalhopping, and more of catching up to do. But the spirit of the meeting was unmistakably the same. Though we met at other times during the year, the pujo meeting remained special. We had come, some of us before time and waiting, some of us inexplicably and inevitably late, in our new Pujo clothes. Now, with android phones and social media, photographic history was easier to document, but even though there were missing faces, those photographs were also about the people who hadn't been able to make it, for the meetings were always about the whole group.
The first year we had lunch together, we managed with a budget of less thank Rs.100 per person. And it was an AC restuarant with comfortable seating and everything. Feels surreal now when I think about it.
Well, I don't think this post has any points to make except my nostalgic rambling. One year I wrote a version of Keats' 'To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent' about our Pujo outing . Can't find the damn notebook anywhere. Another year three of us took a long walk from Gariahat to Jadavpur in the evening, and then suddenly spotting a homebound bus, two of us jumped onboard without even saying goodbye to the third. And so the poor girl turned back in the middle of a conversation to find us gone. Another year we did the same walk with someone doing a loop version of 'ET Go Home' in an operatic strain.
Somehow, over the years, things have become easier. I still dress up, but I don't plan it for months anymore. We meet less often than we did before, but there's no pressure to get the most out of each meeting. Friends still turn up late, go missing, and we still give them grief for it, because it's tradition, and because we miss them. But on the whole, it has become so much easier to be ourselves, with ourselves. Perhaps this is called growing up. Or perhaps this is how we ease into our old relationships.
Autumn in Bengal is a golden season, despite the rain or the heat or the crowd. My memories of these outings will remain forever golden too. To my dear old friends who are all so strange, I wouldn't exchange you for anything.
Shubho Bijaya and Happy Dussera. May we all find the spirit of sweetness and goodwill in the days to come.
If you liked this, you might also enjoy this:
Anniversariesl
🍸
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