Of faith, fervour and family: Durga Puja celebrations in rural Bengal

Our niece Brinda, coming 'home' for Durga Puja to Guptipara, a little over two hours from Kolkata in Hooghly district, brought a special gift this year. Once all the morning hustle-bustle of puja rites at the 450-year-old ancestral house were over, including the 'boli' or ritual sacrifice of an ash gourd, three stalks of sugar cane and a single banana amid much fanfare and fervour, she unwrapped it in the drawing room the 'newest' family home, itself just short of a century.

It was an oil portrait of one of the patriarchs of the Sen family, whose progeny had lived (and lorded over!) Guptipara for over four centuries. Bengal's extreme heat and humidity wreak havoc on all things, with mould, fungus, termites and other bugs having a field day in anything left open to the elements. The portrait had been in terminal decline therefore, the canvas frayed and torn in places. But Brinda had it painstakingly restored, so it looked as good as new now.

The painting, still in its carved frame, was promptly installed in the niche directly opposite the front door, so that he could look out into the checkerboard floored room. He must have been pleased with what he saw with his newly refurbished eyes: members of the fourth and fifth generations of his branch of Guptipara's multifarious Sen family, sitting together convivially, keeping alive a tradition of togetherness that has become rare in our globalised, diasporic times.


Centuries after their forefather and family dropped anchor at the "hidden" hamlet of "Gupti"para on the banks of the Ganga/Hooghly on the way to Kashi, the Sens have remained linked not only terrestrially but emotionally to this corner of Bengal. And the "daughter coming to her maternal abode" narrative of Durga Puja extends to the family too as each branch of the Sens turn by turn every year comes home to Guptipara from around the world to worship the goddess.

Durga Puja in Kolkata is, in many ways, very different from how it is conducted outside the city set up essentially by the British. Even if we accept the theory that the current form of the 'bonedi bari' (aristocratic family) Durga Puja was devised by Raja Nabakrishna Deb at the Sovabazar Rajbari to schmooze Robert Clive after the victory over Nawab Siraj-ud-daulah in 1757, rural Bengal's pujas clearly have a different inspiration as they predate Britain's Indian ambitions.

Kolkata's Durga Pujas, despite the flattering ratification by UNESCO as being part of the world's Intangible Cultural Heritage, are now mostly explosions of creativity rather than expressions of devotion. Her images are made in a myriad of forms, many of them shorn of many of the essentials for worship, all in the name of artistic freedom and are admired by teeming throngs, who are allowed only 15 seconds to gawk before being moved along by 'volunteers'.

The overwhelming Kolkata "pujo vibe" is fun, fashion, food and festivity, pandal-hopping and late night eating; faith is secondary. Ma Durga, in a thousand forms across the city watches as 'Her people' stream past within barricaded walkways scarcely sparing her a glance before admiring the pandal "themes" and heading for the food. But in rural Bengal, whether in a modest village Durga Puja or in the atmospheric ancestral seat of the Sens, faith and tradition are palpable.

With every aspect of worship still followed meticulously and even the idol being remade every year in exactly the same form by the same family of artisans, Durga Puja for the Sens, like for all those with living roots outside Kolkata, is a re-affirmation of not only an abiding faith in Her, but of precious family ties and gratitude to forebears and the land that gave them the base to grow. That is the real Intangible Cultural Heritage. Brinda's gesture reiterated this truth.