We stay on the extreme borders of South Kolkata, and all through I have friends and enemies teasing me that Garia (that’s precisely the name of the place) is barely Kolkata, and I might as well accept myself as a rustic! However, very recently, the place has shot into metropolitan stardom, thanks to the extension of the Metro Railways! Even before this metro revolution, Garia had been becoming remarkably cosmopolitan for quite sometime now, with people from various states making the place their home. However, the locality, or ‘para’ in the vernacular parlance, where we stay is particularly interesting. Though Hindu dominated, there are a considerable number of Christian families residing in the Christian ‘para’ and even larger number of Muslim families. There are no separate quarters, of course: in other words, people of all these religions are kind of spatially interspersed with one another. We have hardly felt any we/they feeling ever, and have happily co-existed, even during the unspeakable catastrophe of the Babri Masjid. We have not felt even a slight ripple of the pogrom that was tearing the nation (especially Bombay) apart, and our experience of the political cataclysm was solely contingent upon televised images of the violence.
This year Eid comes after the official inception of Devipaksha (the period in which Durga Puja is celebrated). Today in the morning I woke up to a song commemorating Ibrahim playing from a Muslim ‘para’. What interested me is that the song was in Bengali, and not in Urdu. Many songs played all through the day, and now as I am writing this blog-entry I hear a song celebrating Durga Puja playing from the same quarters. I guess it’s from some Bengali film. Whatever it is, I suddenly feel like asking what is the real basis of all these incidents of communal violence that are jeopardizing our very existence? If the common people are mostly not so violently racist, what leads to such brutal cases of communal riots, butchering of innocent lives and cross-border terrorism? Who is the mastermind behind all these? Is it the State and its exclusivist nationalism that ignores the feelings and emotions of the common people? What is it? As I experience at this very moment how the spirit of the Durga Puja melts into the euphoria of Eid, I feel like getting into a self-trial…it’s high time we enquired ourselves of our shortcomings. What exactly is going wrong?
Eid Mubarak and Subho Durga Pujo!
This year Eid comes after the official inception of Devipaksha (the period in which Durga Puja is celebrated). Today in the morning I woke up to a song commemorating Ibrahim playing from a Muslim ‘para’. What interested me is that the song was in Bengali, and not in Urdu. Many songs played all through the day, and now as I am writing this blog-entry I hear a song celebrating Durga Puja playing from the same quarters. I guess it’s from some Bengali film. Whatever it is, I suddenly feel like asking what is the real basis of all these incidents of communal violence that are jeopardizing our very existence? If the common people are mostly not so violently racist, what leads to such brutal cases of communal riots, butchering of innocent lives and cross-border terrorism? Who is the mastermind behind all these? Is it the State and its exclusivist nationalism that ignores the feelings and emotions of the common people? What is it? As I experience at this very moment how the spirit of the Durga Puja melts into the euphoria of Eid, I feel like getting into a self-trial…it’s high time we enquired ourselves of our shortcomings. What exactly is going wrong?
Eid Mubarak and Subho Durga Pujo!
2 comments:
and the other day, i read a newspaper report about a place where the iftar party is conducted with part of the money that is collected for puja.
the tone of the report was like, ohhh! this is such an unusual thing and what not.
when, it isn't, and needn't be.
Surprisingly, i ve experienced a more or like same situation even in guwahati, Assam where since childhood, i ve seen muslim communities going out and taking part in our durga puja celebrations and hindus preparing special dishes just for the occasion of eid...maybe thats why i feel its not just for bengalis, but those living in the north eastern belt,its always a 'baaro maash 'e tero parbon' irrespective of any specific community!
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