The goddess is portrayed in the traditional Bengal style nowadays, as a reaction to the many distressing innovations in her appearance recently. There is also a hefty prize offered by for the best traditional image and the swing is back to basics. The popular actress of the moment was usually the model for the face, with Hema Malini in particular becoming a sort of basic template for about fifteen years at one time. Sometimes the goddess was shown in jeans and packing the latest in automatic firepower, which outraged a great many. However the artistic tradition of India was always casting the gods in contemporary clothing and weapons so there is really nothing very wrong about it. In the year of Jurassic park, the goddess apparently had misplaced her traditional mount, the lion, and was shown riding a dinosaur! As can be seen form all these examples the goddess is not regarded as remote from the daily life of the people but very much a taken for granted part of normal existence.

The festive air begins a week before the actual puja days with Mahalaya, the announcement that the Devi Durga has left the Himalayas and is traveling to Bengal. There is a traditional radio programme that broadcasts hymns invoking the Mother, and by far the most famous version was by Birendra Krishna Bhadra. His voice was so powerfully evocative of the Devi, though slightly nasal, those even years later Calcuttans get goose pimples when they recall it. As with the other slightly askew nature of the entire festival, Bhadra was an agnostic and he had millions of believers getting up at four a.m. to listen in and be swept away in a tide of devotion. A suggestion that he was getting old and should be replaced once outraged all of the faithful. He has passed away now. However the oddest sight during the entire festival is that of Marxist party cadres setting up stalls in the areas near the Pandals and distributing revolutionary literature! Nobody seems to find it the slightest bit incongruous.

For the three and a half days the festival lasts, the city of Calcutta shuts down. Even the newspapers have a holiday except for The Statesman. The yearly bonuses are paid out round this time so all businesses have a great boom period of sales for about a week preceding the event. It s also a great time for the culture vultures as there is a glut of literary output with every publication worth its name bringing out a special volume for the pujas. New music albums too are timed to launch with the puja fever so that sales are maximized. If a song happens to become popular at this time it will be played over and over again through loudspeakers until the entire suffering neighborhood knows the lyrics by heart.

During these three days, night and day are inverted. People sleep during the day and at night they come out in the millions, no exaggeration, and wander from pandal to pandal, praying to the Image of the Divine Mother. A great many people cover the entire city on foot in those three days. It is one great peal of Joy, and the stern rules about late nights and intermingling of young people are relaxed for the nonce. People are in their year's best finery and everybody is determined to have a good time. Families visit with a vengeance and an energy that is truly breathtaking. The religious aspect is rigorously maintained in a daily schedule of many minor and major services. Once the Puja and immersion is over the city literally lapses into gloom for while. However there is always next year to look forward to.

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- Rohit Arya

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