Durga Pooja in Bokaro

If you are asked to think of a city that comes to mind for Durga Pooja, you will say Calcutta. If you are a Bengali, you might add an Oh as a precursor and an exclamation at the end. I met many of my colleagues here who are going to the city for Durga Pooja. This act of hero-worship in the form of city worship can sometimes take the focus away from the character actors. And one character in this Durga Pooja was my little town of Bokaro. Don’t worry if you cannot recall hearing about this town, you might have forgotten your general knowledge classes. There is a steel plant there.

Calcutta or no Calcutta, the Durga Pooja celebration in Bokaro is memorable for those of us who have witnessed it in our childhood. Bokaro is divided into sectors like Sector 1, 2 and so on. And each sector has subsectors like 1A, 2B, and so on. Each of these subsectors has its own pooja pandal. There is a total of twelve sectors in Bokaro and on average each sector has four subsectors which make it forty eight pandals to visit in four days: chhashthi, saptami, ashtami and navami. Twelve Pandals a day!

A difficult task even though Bokaro is a small town! You can roam around the whole town on a bicycle in one day. But the spirits were not small, at least when we were children. Each day of pandal hopping was preceded by a planning session, first with friends on the cricket field and then at home with parents. News about pandals spread like news about an actress’s personal life, full of spice and cooked. One friend might suggest going to Sector 12 pandal because his father had had a glimpse of it while traveling on the scooter and it is a replica of Titanic. Other would say that the pandal at Sector 9 is a replica of a dinosaur. I and my siblings would gather all this information in the evening playing sessions and come home with news for my father. He would have his own set of spiced up and cooked stories. Finally after a discussion when my father would be having his tea, we would narrow down on the plan and then off we went as darkness descended.

Some pandals would be a matter of scale. Large pandal, a big idol of Goddess Durga, a big mela on a big field and lots and lots of people. The crowd was so big that my younger brother was lost two of three times when he was small. Different types of toys, spicy food, big jhoolas and an occasional serendipitous meeting with a known family from the colony or from the school. These pandals would take a lot of our time and we would be able to visit just two pandals on days like these.

Some pandals were exquisite. Managed by Bengalis, they were the classical version of the more pop-like large pandals. Bengali music would be playing. Crowds were thinner. There were toys and food but they are not the primary attractions. The pandit was ever-present. A small stage for the children to perform drama or dance or recite a poem. Here we would meet our teachers!

Some pandals would be insignificant, yet would be on the itinerary of all the children so that could increase their count. These were those pandals in poorer localities who could not gather a large fund. Here there was peace and tranquility. Sometimes we would spend a lot of time in these pandals just soaking in the aura.

The roads would be filled with cars and scooters, families crisscrossing each other while visiting Pandals. It was a time of fun and frolic. Pandals would occupy us all day, first in our conversation and then later when we visited them. I don’t know how it is in Calcutta but it got to be really really good to beat the fun we had. Sometimes character actors can give performances that overshadow the heroes!