I was born and grew up in Delhi till I was eight years old. At that time we used to regularly travel back to Kolkata for the Durga Puja, more so because my grandfather started the famous Ekdalia puja there. When I was eight, we shifted back to Kolkata. Puja has always been intrinsic, ingrained in us. We used to love the festivities and the excitement, the many clothes we used to shop for. One of the strongest memories is of getting Maa Durga from Kumutuli and establishing the idol in the pandal. We celebrated the festival as a community. Each of us was allocated a job: elders planned the bhog, my siblings and cousins cut the vegetables and distributed the bhog. My job was to make enormous quantity of red and white chandan paste for the pujo. I can still feel the excitement of waking up everyday at 4am to go to the pujo ghor. I didn’t participate much in the cultural shows though. I was a bookworm and stayed away from it. I also remember how one day was reserved exclusively for pandal darshan— we went around seeing idols in 25-30 pandals in a single day. Most of the life came to a standstill in Kolkata, you were forced to walk everywhere because of the traffic.