Durga Puja countdown begins

I don’t like it.

I am trying my best to be logical, clinical, rational….

I can’t help feeling terribly mushy.

And to make it sillier, it’s about Durga Puja, a festival that I’ve been attending for all five days, with clockwork regularity, for every year of my life.

Yet, I miss each one of those moments.

The exchanging of parcels of new clothes between Jaipur-Siliguri-Kolkata-and where ever Boro Pishi happened to be.

Being emotionally blackmailed into a thorough spring cleaning before Mahalaya by Mom (To ensure each inch of the house was washed, each bit of well everything was kept in the sun for hours and arranged back, she would start the whole process, and end up looking so tired and frails that………u guessed it!)

Rushing away right in the morning for “pushpanjali”, preening up in all finery just to go and watch the cultural functions, the puja, and……… well everyone else. Having friends stay over just so that we all could spend hours at the puja. The Arti, the competitions, the bhog, the evenings-it was an unreal existence for five days, every year.

The best part for me used to be the Bhashan, the immersion procession, where I would always wrangle one of Durga Thakur’s weapons to keep until the next year…

The last “trishul” I kept was thrown away long ago.

High time I grew up. I know!

But I still think my kids are really missing something.