Durga Puja: So So Water
Four scenes from a city honouring her goddess
I · THE FLOOD
I opened the door of the Uber waiting outside the airport and jumped in.
Last time I was here, Kolkatians wouldn’t stop raving about a festival occurring each autumn. Durga Puja. Ten days where the city builds temporary temples to a warrior goddess, then drowns her clay idols in the river. Curiosity had brought me back to witness that myself.
We drove off towards the city. The driver kept complaining about water, and I nodded in acceptance without putting too much thought into it. The suburban streets around the airport looked like I remembered them.
Once we got closer to the heart of Kolkata I started to understand his concern. After leaving the highway we soon got into a street where the water level rose up, drowning the exhaust pipe of the car. “So water...”, “So so water” the young driver kept grumbling.
After making some attempts to get to my apartment he couldn’t go any further. I had to continue alone on foot. I took my backpack, checked the directions and started walking. A man stopped me and insisted that the chosen path would put my head underwater. I thanked him for the warning and tried the parallel street. No warning this time. Immediately my sneakers got soaked. Then my shin. Knees. Eventually the water level was up above my waist.
As I waded through the water I thought I was approached by a snake. Turned out to be a giant condom. I kept a distance from it while carefully inspecting the ground with my feet so as to not trip on something unexpected and get myself and my gear fully baptised.
The afternoon sun cut through the haze and the lush green trees rising from the sidewalk.
I got to a main street and joined a line of pedestrians and we moved along abandoned buses. I was worried about what effect this might have on the festival I was here to witness.
A young man wading beside me told me he’d been out getting things for his mother. Some smaller pandals (the temporary temples) had taken damage, he said, but neither he nor the others around me were concerned about the festival.
II · KUMARTULI — THE GODS EMERGE
A few days later the water had receded. At night I headed to Kumartuli, where the idols for the festival were being built. When I reached, the place was teeming with activity. Around me, golden lights were falling on blurry three-eyed faces looking into my eyes.
I stopped and blinked to take it in. The faces now appeared printed on yellow t-shirts, worn by a few muscular men. They climbed a painted truck and were surrounded by spectators’ hands pointing down a narrow lane. There, out of workshops gods were emerging one by one. Ropes tightened around their bodies, they were each dragged by a dozen other men shouting in unity to synchronize their pulling. It resembled the teamwork of a rowing crew on a medieval ship.
One jewelry-dressed creature was dragged towards us. The crew stopped before the blue truck. Now the synchronized effort was required once again. But this time to hoist the massive goddess onto the truck bed. Once she was secured the crew took off towards one of the three thousand pandals where she would be revered for the coming week and a half.
The procedure continued all night as loaded trucks departed with new passengers while empty ones came back. Ready for another round.
III · PANDAL-HOPPING
The festival officially started and that night I met up with some friends. We had hired a driver and would spend the night pandal-hopping the city. String lights hung over our nightcrawler as we crept among other taxis. A family crossed the road in front of us, the parents eating pizza slices, a few kids holding a balloon. A ferris-wheel was rising behind a perimeter fence to my left. Peeking through an opening I saw young couples shooting gallery guns.
It was after midnight when we reached the first pandal. The entrance leading to the installation was filled with people. Guards tried to control the crowd with repeated whistle blows, ignored by everyone. We joined the queue and moved at the pace of a sleeping slug. A hundred heated bodies acted as a sauna in the tropical night and it was difficult to breathe. As we got carried through the thick crowd, I remembered the flood from some days ago. The necessity to surrender to circumstances. I felt an elbow in my back and continued on the balmy promenade.
The path led us into a raised wooden corridor, with rafters that resembled old village architecture. As we got further the installation took shape. To the left of us stood a woman the height of four humans. Barefoot in a long white dress, she held her hand over her neck gripping the spear attached to her back. To the right we could look down upon an open field, where a wooden hut was rising in the center. In a circular motion, men in dark hoods would move around the hut in front of a LED-screen projecting a silhouetted slow motion dance. People immediately grabbed their phones to record the spectacle or take a selfie with their companions. The crowd kept moving forward though and making any attempt to pause to take in the art would trigger the whistle-frenetic security guards.
A few minutes later we were out. Hours of queuing for a few seconds of the most abstract art performance. In the meantime our driver had gone MIA. Eventually we found the car and knocked on the car window that had fogged up by the sleeping breath from our driver.
We rode on towards the next pandal.
IV · IMMERSION
On the final day I arrived back at Kumartuli after the sun had set. At a distance I could hear a tangle of percussion beating in the tropical night. I followed the sound until I got to the heart of it. The Hooghly River. Sodium vapor lamps cut through the smoking haze from a dance group’s censers and lit up the palm trees against the black horizon. Trucks kept pulling up with gods, bringing them back from the pandals. Reversing what I had seen before the festival started.
Surrounded by drums and smoke, the three-eyed workers offloaded the heavy gods from the trucks. Some were shouting her name while others recorded her final minutes on their phones. Dancers smiled and invited us to participate in their act. One of the gods was now pulled towards the ghat, ancient steps leading down to the water. People followed and positioned themselves along the steps.
I took my place in the crowd and watched the yellow-dressed muscles bring the goddess down. It did not look like an easy task. They pulled with ropes from two sides to both initiate and control the descent. At times the movement was slightly rushed which resulted in panicked shouts and reactive pulls to avoid an accident.
Once they had reached the last step, the ropes were untied. A loud choir of shouts sent Durga into the river with a big splash. I could feel the droplets hitting my face as I looked at the woman lying in the water.
Men jumped into the river to help the clay sculpture float out in the deep end. After the heavy base had sunk the only thing that remained floating was a dress.
