There's a weather-beaten air of fatigue Kolkata has managed to master over the years. Tossed around by history, its strength can best be felt in the drowsy poise sticking its neck out in the whirlpool of change. Empires have unhinged, the skyline has undergone visible change, people have come and gone. What, then, has remained?
The three Ps.
Prem, politics and pujo.
Charles Lamb had once written that a man is completely out of his element as long as he is operative. Lamb was altogether for the life contemplative. A walk at no fixed pace, nor with any settled purpose. In Kolkata, Lamb would have lived his dream. In Kolkata, you walk about, not to and from.
If there is one city that can cajole you out of the fast-paced rush of blur everyday life thrusts upon us, it is this one.
However, the 300-year-old city makes an exception.
The skies have turned a bright hue of cheerful blue, leave applications in offices are piling themselves up in neat little stacks and Kolkata is experiencing its first stirrings of wakefulness.
While the Durga idols await a decorous unveiling right before the city flutters open its eyelids, the striking billboards are the first sign. All across the city, huge billboards flank either side of the roads, beaming sunnily at passers-by with a towering presence difficult to dismiss. One rarely reads the festive messages on them. One always notices the vibrant colours.
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The pandals are the clear show-stealers. They do not afford one the easy privilege of sauntering into one. It requires clever manoeuvring, jostling and an alert air of commitment to get inside these make-shift structures set up to house the idols. There are innumerable communities sprawled across the city, each one pulling off a separate puja, a separate set of arrangements and a separate set of details to cater to. At times, one notices the beefed up colossuses towering over other pandals with a presence that can be visibly discerned in the maddening crowds, the frenzied jostling and the teeming peddlers outside each one.
The city has risen to a deafening roar. Shaking itself out of her stupor, the last dregs of an ominous calm, it has reared up with an octane rush that knows no bounds. There is a semblance of a smile playing on its lips that will soon turn into a wider one, as it overlooks the revelry wistfully.
As the vermillion smears foreheads during the traditional sindoor khela, the city is welcomed each morning with a splendour and spirit witnessed every autumn and it mulls over the nature of worship. Is it the idol, is it about the people themselves or is it the mere spirit?
Meanwhile, a balloon seller near a pandal is seen beaming at a little boy looking up at her colourful wares with a twinkle in his eyes, an yearning in his hesitant smile. She looks down for a moment at the child, her eyes crinkle as half a smile plays on her lips, and she hands over a red balloon to the child. The ecstatic toddler staggers off with an air of earned triumph, while the balloon seller fishes around her little cloth bag of savings with a contemplative look. A sudden cheer of revelers nearby makes him look up, her eyes twinkle with a hesitant smile and he seems to forget what he was doing.
There are thousands in the city who wake up every autumn to this idyll Kolkata has created. Beyond religion, beyond rituals, beyond the daily grind. The fervour is astounding. And the delight of slacking off and letting go, incomparable. As night creates day on Pujo mornings, Kolkatans create permanence from hope – hope that the six to seven days of festivity shall last forever.
Amidst all this, there lurks a certain sense of foreboding. The mean reds haunt the city every now and then – it is scared but it does not know what exactly it is that it is scared of. A wayward sigh, a pensive face, a walk about town.
What happens when the revelry ends? The fever shall die down, but will Kolkatans continue walking about, shunning the fast-paced rush invading other cities? Or will they start walking to and fro with hurried looks and preoccupied faces?
Kolkata doesn’t quite know. Time will tell. For now, everything that kills it makes it feel alive!
(This article was first published on 7 October 2016. It has been republished from The Quint’s archives ahead of Durga Puja)
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