This is my last Durga Puja as my term here in Calcutta ends and I leave for the UK in another 10 days. If someone were to ask me what is the one thing I remember most about Calcutta, I would say Durga Puja.
Until you have lived and experienced it, you can’t fully understand it. Over the previous three years, we have covered different aspects of Puja — from creation and construction to inauguration and immersion. The best part for me is the sense of community that the Puja tends to bring. When you go and see people having their meals together and pandal hopping; a sea of people celebrating together, it’s exhilarating.
True Spirit is of course a great initiative. However, some of the smaller pujas don’t have the kind of resources that the larger ones do. You can’t expect CCTV cameras in a small, local puja but the fact that they do their best is what sets them apart, keeping safety in mind.
Because of this initiative, people have become more safety conscious, I think. A lowly lit pandal will arrange for special lights to guide people, making public safety one of the most important elements of the puja. Any large festival requires that kind of care and the True Spirit award sets a very good tone and example for safety standards.
I feel, that as VIPs, we are spoilt, hopping from one pandal to another with ease and comfort. We need to understand the kind of hard work that goes into implementing these safety measures, especially by the police and the organisers of these pujas. Creativity, community, expression, joy come together during Puja. People get a chance to express their joy in the city of joy.
Today, I travelled through four pujas in the north which began with Tala Park Prattoy, which was the most amazing pandal when it came to creativity. It was massive in size and breathtaking. They had most of the safety measures in place but we were most definitely taken by their creativity, keeping the full spirit of Puja in place.
They get 15 lakh visitors on an average in a day, I was told, and the crowd is very well managed. This was followed by Lalabagan Sarbajanin Durgotsav Samity, which was small, simple and lovely. I loved it especially because they were so thorough and had all the services in place. It was a small community that was really well provided for.
We then went to Tekiapara Sarbojanin Durgatsav Committee, which was a very simple puja, which even had emergency lighting and impeccable contingency planning. I toured the toilets and even though it was bit of a walk, it was all there within the community.
Chorebagan Sarbojanin Durgotsab Samity was the final pandal on our list and it definitely was one of the show-pieces of the north. I have colleagues coming from Delhi and I would definitely tell them to drop into this one — for its beauty and ease of access. For four years, we have been spoilt with royal treatment and I will cherish these memories forever.
- Bruce Bucknell, British deputy high commissioner, was a True Spirit judge on Sashthi. He is available on Twitter @Bruce_Bucknell.Follow official updates on Twitter @UKinKolkata