With the traditional Durga Puja gradually transforming over the decades into a bustling corporate fiesta there seems to have emerged a sharp divide between the traditionalists and modernists.
The pandemonium that is happening in the name of Durga Puja is but an urban corporate jamboree and there is not an iota of Bhakti involved in it, says a noted Bengali film star who wants to remain anonymous. “We perform Durga Puja (worship of Durga) and not celebrate Durgotsav (Durga festival) as is the fashion nowadays,” says loknath Chatterjee, a Calcutta High Court advocate, whose household Puja is more than 300 years old and is performed with “optimum devotion.”
In fact, most Bengal households and the smaller Pujas are a simple affair where there is no experimentation with the Mother Goddess’ idol and where catchy Themes are not allowed to undermine the spirit of the Puja.
“A sense of elation euphoria is bound to come with the daughter returning home after a year from her in-laws’ place,” says AK Deb of Sobhabazaar Raj. In Bengal Durga is worshipped as a Daughter who comes home once a year from Kailash her husband’s abode and not a Mother.
But “merriment and corporatisation are two different things,” says Saileja Sharma, a homemaker. “It is simply frustrating: the nightlong-24x7-crowd, streets crammed with makeshift shops so that you cannot even walk properly. This is absolute madness. Goddess is miles away from the Puja pandals,” fumes Dr Ambikesh Sharma, an octogenarian philosopher.
“If only we could get back those good old days!”But Rishi Oberoy, a senior marketing manager with a paint company thinks the opposite. “It is all about reaching Durga Puja to the world and not keeping it confined to limited household.” While Subhojit Chakrabarty, a Puja organiser, says “Mother’s real form is universal and we have no right to keep her local. let the universe worship her.”
But are worshipping and Bhakti identical subjectsIJ “No one stops you from preserving your Bhakti within. But you are none to stop the world from have a flavour of Mother Goddess in their own way,” says Debashis Banerjee, another organiser reminding how badly an economically starved Bengal needs tourism industry to flourish and how Durga Puja gives a huge fillip to art and crafts industry.
Be things what they may people on both sides of the hedge have sizeable number to fall back on and the debate is unlikely to endimmediately.