Iris

“Hey are you going back for Durga Puja this time?”

“Me? No. Not possible…We have a celebration and Yajna here, so going home is not possible. What about you?”

“I’ll be reaching late….Have got some library work. Will be there just for the Dussehera day and rest have to go and meet some friends. What about mamu and chinky-pinki.”

“Mamu has official work and Chinky-Pinky are going for a camp and aunty will be leaving with her friends to her maternal home. Youngest mamu has a Durga Pooja at his own office and so he’s the host of the entire office. All the rest are going to some place or the other for these holidays. No one’s coming back home.”

(Teleconversation)

So how did you spend your Puja vacations? Writing this blog piece takes me back to class 5th when we were given assignments at school post Puja vacations to write small essays on the topic: “Durga Puja and how you celebrated it?” It was my favorite essay topic. I had hoards of things to write from my first-hand experiences starting from the Puja celebrations, rangoli, new dresses and wonderful delicacies cooked everyday with new menus, meeting cousins, aunties and uncles from paternal and maternal sides and freaking out full-measure. This was the time when we were actually FREE as during the Pujas moms were busy cooking, meeting people and dads in “men talk” and moreover in grandparents’ places you are just fearless of any parental attack. We played through the day, sometimes were dragged by an aunty to be given a quick bath and then were left on our own to do what we pleased and play and fight through the day. No one interfered and no parents stopped us from doing whatever we liked until the friendly squabbles got into bloody war. An uncle would then intervene and take the entire team out for icecreams. For people in the Eastern regions of India, Durga Puja is considered as the best time of the year. Navarathri celebrations are one of the most vibrant celebrations in India. But in our homes (mostly in Orissa) Maha Sasthi (the sixth day of this nine-day festival) to Vijaya Dasami (tenth and final day), celebrations are at their peak. The festival is known for its splendour, its uniting factors and specifically for its family oriented values.

I suppose most of us have maternal-paternal “ancestral” homes. Ancestral — even if your grandparents live there, because that is not your home and you go there either during Pujas or during some other function. In the earlier times, we divided the vacations between my maternal grandparents and paternal grandparents’ place. Our time was spent in shopping for the festoons, colourful dresses and cloth materials for the gods and altar, decorating and colouring the puja place. This year I reached late to my maternal home, on the Navami day (ninth day) and was busy roaming around and tasting delicacies that were cooked as Prasad. Only during the lunch hour after the morning arti did I realize that there was no one in the gathering except grandma, aunty and my mom and I. Durga puja was a time when our homes were packed. In fact, sometimes some of the family members carried their sheets to the outer verandah and slept there because of the lack of space. In my maternal grandparents’ place when nanu was alive, not just all his children but his brothers’ wives and children, his cousins and friends, grandmom’s parents, everyone came and stayed during the pujas. Food was cooked in large dome shaped vessels, meant to cater more than 100 persons. But this time when I went there, there was only silence and space to greet me. The puja altar was also very sparsely decorated and things seem now to happen because there is just a tradition of Durga Puja in our homes. People have done away with the formality of community gathering and joint family system for good or for worse.

In my paternal grandparents’ place the silence is even more deafening. The family is huge with 8 daughters and four sons, each of them having children and spouses. So the gatherings during Puja (we mostly met for the next big festival after Durga Puja called Kumarpurnima) was even more vibrant. Grandpa in his 90s stays there in that village, missing and waiting for his children to come back. However, we have different plans for vacations.

One might think that this a natural syndrome of joint family system and Sociologists and economists might argue that the nuclear family helps. But, I can claim that we don’t meet that one brother or sister or even our parents for years. They are alone during Diwali and our plans are separate from that of our parents. But, to what extent and which future are we moving? What culture and what family values are we going to pass on to our children? I wonder…

But, for the time being if someone asks me to write an essay on Durga Puja I might fail the test.

As a child I lived in a small industrial town located in some remote corner of Orissa. It was an unhappening place with people owning a lot of money and not enough avenues to spend or invest. The best use of their money was in market buying lot of jwelleries and dresses and small parties and long drives to Bhubaneswar (then the only “big town” of Orissa). I remember my parents’ had a deliberate disgust for this lifestyle of the industrial town. Mom stayed away from kitty parties (where women discuss each others’ sarees and husbands) , dad from gossiping-colleagues and flatter-in-need bosses and concentrated on their profession completely. We too were isolated from the general crowd of club-going, over-spoilt kids and were asked to stay at home, indulge in private fantasies, develop hobbies, spend time with a handful of relatives, but most importantly study…

Yes, the isolation that my family chose for itself literally made a self-centered, peevish, nerd out of me. But my parents were human too, they had one particular weakness…they entered into the “competition” of that small town through us. In short, their entire life was spent in proving to that community that their kids were better off in studies than others. Mom would spend hours with us, doing household chores, helping in homeworks, teaching me Indian history, asking Geography questions, hitting me when maths sums or chemical equations went wrong and giving a warm hug when I scored highest in some subjects. Dad would tip-toe into the house during exams, not disturbing our flow of question-answer schedules, open his files and sit quitely until we finished the revisions at nth point of night. Mom would not serve dinner to the entire family until we properly finished our studies. Sometimes at 1 am we would be served chilled upma, or cold chapatis and sabji and then we would be given a joy ride in the old Lambi (lambretta scooter) in order to relax after the taxing sessions. They hardly spent time talking to each other, their entire time went in making us “academically good” in that place, so much so that now when we have left the town they hardly have any topic to discuss between themselves.

But unfortunately, the competitions in those towns are fought on a different level. There is not only a war regarding “whose kid scores what percentage” but there’s also a war regarding “whose kid is in which engineering college/medical college just after 10+2″ and then “whose daughter/son is married to which wonderful eligible single in town”. When I chose literature as majors after my second year, the entire community behaved as if they had won the competition. Some of my father’s colleagues came and told him sadly, “she was not that bad a student but poor girl she has ruined her life…sometimes parents should decide for their childrens’ welfare…you should have given a fat donation and put her into some Engineering college” . Then when I did well and chose research as my field, ladies came and sympathized with mom, “when girls are getting married she goes to do research…any break ups kya? how are you going to choose a “Suitable Boy” (remember Vikram Seth) for her…she will not come home to be seen by any grooms family.” Poor mom-dad! They felt, they had failed in every competition towards the end of their service tenure for I didnot come under the ambit of any of the “common success equations” which their community understands…

Competition becomes so much a part of nuclear families in industrial town, that it almost gets into your blood. From studies to jobs to boy/girl friends to marriage (“suitable boy”), everything becomes a competition and you have to be quick — very quick to grab things. I remember calling up a long-lost friend from school a few years’ back thinking she’ll be happy to speak to me — but no she thought I had called up to request her to forward my resume for a job in the MNC that she works in. She responded with a tight-lipped “hello” and hung up even before I could ask her about her life in general. For a moment I thought I had failed in the competition called life, had to pay the price of choosing “the untrodden path”, but then a moment later hardened up for some new utopian destination.

I tend to retailiate more severely these days, have become more impatient with people or with what I think is “unprofessional” or “not-of-business” behaviour. Sometimes parents say am being harsh and too ambitious, but that’s what they and the society has made of me– the grammar in life’s workshop being “everything’s fair in love and war” and now it’s an open war dear…

I stop here…almost 1.30 am. I am reminded of that famous soliloquy from Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It , called “Seven Stages of A Man’s Life”…you can also rephrase it as “Seven Stages of A Woman’s Life”, where he famously states that “all world’s a stage…” and describes the seven different stages of human beings from childhood to death:

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” — Jaques (Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)

Mr. Shakespeare (there are recent debates that it might be Ms. Shakespeare ) knew the grammar of competition in the 16th century much better and more philosophically than many of us know today. Even while coming from an elementary grammar school, he left far behind the great “University Wits” (a school of dramatists who dominated the literary scenario of the time) in the competition of producing world class plays. Closer to home, the Sanskrit poetic genius Kalidasa competed with none other than his wife Vidyottamma, to write immortal epics like Abhigyanasakuntalam, Meghadootam, Kumarsambhavam and so on, which became landamarks of Sanskrit literature.

There are many other instances to substantiate the point that competition has both a positive and a negative angle, but it might suffice to say that what you make of it is your own choice and prerogative…get destroyed by it or destroy the competing factors…Choose wisely!