From the myth of Goddess Durga to the transgender Durga idol this year, the pavilions’ architectural fiesta and illusory sacredness also underline populist consumerism, writes ANANYA BORGOHAIN
This is perhaps the most consumerist and splendorous time of the year. In myriad forms, Durga Puja, Navratri, Dussehra, Karva Chauth, and so on are going to serve as the template for grand celebrations in the country. These mega festivities not only merge ritual with religion but also encapsulate the fervour of public art enterprises, with their stunning art installations and grandly decorated pavilions (pandals), almost defining the pulse of the city as a glorious carnival. The grand pandals, clay images (pratimas), pushpanjali (offering flowers to the gods and goddesses on Maha Ashtami), relishing savouries, music, and the union of friends and family colour the five days of festivity that end with thevisarjan (immersion) of the idols.
What is also traditional to the Bengalis of Kolkata is the early morningMahishasuramardini, a two-hour radio programme on Mahalaya that has continued for decades. The late Birendra Krishna Bhadra and the late Pankaj Kumar Mullick earlier recited hymns from the Devi Mahatmyam (Chandi Path) on All India Radio.
Durga Puja, celebrated from the sixth to 10th day — Mahalaya, Shashthi, Maha Saptami, Maha Ashtami, Maha Nabami and Vijayadashami of bright lunar fortnight in the Hindu month of Ashvin, has been celebrated for centuries to mark the victory of good over evil, of Goddess Durga over demon Mahishasura.
A recently released book by author, professor of History, and the Director of Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, Tapati Guha-Thakurta, titled In the Name of the Goddess (Primus Books, `5,500), is a scholarly pursuit to understand the multifarious facets of this mass festivity. She mentions that contemporary celebration of the festival has undergone a critical transition with regard to timing, forms and locations. Today in Bengal, billboards also present Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the form of Goddess Durga. This shift of iconicity from the divine to the human is also manifested in the numerous advertisement hoardings in the city where brands try to market their product with festival offers, glamorous models photoshopped with 10 hands, idols of football players luring crowds, and so on.
Interestingly, yet predictably, the sentiments maintain in Delhi as well. Although here, Durga Puja celebrations are also a reflection of cultural curiosity emanating from the visual glories. There is, however, no unanimous sense of belonging, unlike in Kolkata, among the young, urban Bengali population that have been born and brought up in the cosmopolitan setup. They like the hustle and bustle and vibrant vibes of the festivities and yet manage to be not wholly consumed by the emotions attached to it.
The oldest community Durga Puja festival of Delhi is said to be the Delhi Durga Puja Samiti (the Kashmere Gate Durga Puja) in the lawns of Bengali Sr Sec School at Alipur Road. Bengali settlers in Delhi from the colonial period had started the tradition, following the lead of a railway doctor named Hemchandra Sen. Other than that, the impressive pandals that are bustling with massive crowds every year are at Timarpur, Mayur Vihar-1, and the famous puja samitis at CR Park — Kalibari, Mela Ground, Co-operative Ground, Karol Bagh Bangiya Samsad, among many others. While the probashis (settlers) at Kashmere Gate started it as Baroyari puja (community festival) after many families migrated from (then) Calcutta to serve the Government in the new British capital, Delhi, the newer and more urban CR Park was born out of the EPDP (East Pakistan Displaced People) project, whose objective was to stabilise Bengali refugees from East Pakistan after the 1971 Bangladesh War.
The artisans, who make the idols, camp in the city for several days before the festivities start. The mud that is used to make the idols at the popular pandals is also often brought from the Hooghly river in West Bengal. It is said that clay, that is essentially mud and water, is the most pure and suitable for sculpting. Delhi Police also issues special parking passes to the residents during this time and outsiders are not allowed into the colony at this time as well.
Following years of research, Guha-Thakurta furnishes a magnificently insightful ethnography of the festival. Spread across eight chapters and well documented with several photographs, she visited hundreds of pandals, in her attempt to chronicle the spectacular rituals that now contain the cultural pulse of the historic city that is Kolkata. As they say, the Kolkata landscape is defined and designed by its pre-puja and post-puja phases. She narrates in careful details, the minutest nuances of the celebrations, from the festival’s pre-histories to its present day demands; she talks about the pandal makers, the temples, the Durga Puja tour groups, sponsorship, the police surveillance during this time, the official authorities’ responsibilities, the sculptors who make the idols, and much more. However, the book, although discussing public art, is rather exorbitantly priced for mass consumption.
Guha-Thakurta studies the shift in Durga Puja from emotional, mythical and ritualistic refinement to a more materialistically illustrative montage. She writes, “To bring modern stylistic idioms to work within a clay-modelled image of the goddess meant an inevitable recourse to a ‘vernacular’ aesthetic. The ‘vernacular’ becomes the all-important term to think with, in this new genres of ‘modern art Durgas’, with the Bakulbagan ‘artists’ puja setting the trail for the present. We see how the ‘vernacular’ would set the parameters of the modern within this field of work but could never be modernist”.
In Delhi, this transient fête, educates the non-Bengali pandal hoppers too of the Bengali socio-cultural flamboyance through the glittering facades of important cultural markers, such as monuments, rivers, palaces, universities, along with the idols of gods and goddesses, in the puja pavilions.
The almost week-long celebrations are an illusory fiesta of architectural renaissance and dazzling sacredness, but they also underline the consumerist populism and metropolitan art. The corporate sponsorship (a good pavilion takes lakhs to be constructed), exhibitions (for instance, in Kolkata, Asian Paints famously organised the ‘Sharad Samman’ 25th anniversary exhibition in 2009 to commemorate the award that is given to the ‘best dressed maa’), urban aesthetics, media glare, technical logistics, all jointly influence the significance of the modern Durga Puja.
There is today a sense of scopophilia (pleasure just by looking) associated with the rituals and decorations, rather than historical nostalgia. But then not all forms of scopophilia need to be negated. After all, there’s also new hope as this year’s Durga Puja in Kolkata is also set to make history as the country’s first transgender Durga idol will be brought to the public by a local transgender people’s collective in association with Pratyay Gender Trust, at the Udyami Yubak Brinda Durga Puja today.
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