Sponsored Puja

I opened an e-mail from a friend, which carried a link to an article in one of the national newspapers. Here-mail had a subject line written in lower case alphabets. "the city that was once ours". I was curious. Iclicked on the link, and the title was "Puja sale eludes small shops, glitzy malls do brisk business."Another product of alliterative journalism, I thought. I started reading, gravitated only by the sparseness ofher lower-case alphabets, the "was", the "ours", and the secret loss tucked between them. Perhapsbecause I was reading Agha Shahid Ali’s "Farewell" that evening. "My memory keeps getting in theway of your history". But this one is about Durga Puja sales, about glitzy malls, about brisk business.Or is it?

I was intrigued, I read on. It talks about the change of shopping patterns of Kolkata customers, who arepreferring the westernized malls at Camac Street or Elgin Road to the Gariahat, New Market or Shyambazarshops. The customers complain about the lack of parking places in the traditional shopping areas, and love theone-stop shopping experience at Forum or Westside, where they get "all the leading brands just under oneroof. Moreover, one gets cosmetics, ornaments, perfumes and leather products of international brands here."They love the overpriced clothes, they love the escalators, they love the coffee that costs $1, they lovetheir American evenings. The article also pictures shopkeepers from traditional shopping areas. One of themsays, "The jute mill where I was working had closed down last year. So I thought of opening this shop. Butnow I am at a loss. I cannot even repay my money lender." At the end of this article is a link to anotherone, titled "Animated CD to play Bengali teacher to NRI kids".

Last year when I was in Kolkata during Durga Puja, the picture was similar. In the few years that I was inUS doing my PhD, the city has changed considerably. The city has changed itself, slowly, invisibly, from beingcompassionate to being indifferent. Like a little boy holding his mother’s fingers, growing up, millimetersby millimeters, so that one day he would be old enough to send her to an old-age home.

On my way from Dum Dum airport to Golf Green, where I live, I noticed that the city has become a city ofbillboards. Every product, every emotion, every thought was commodified on huge billboards, ready forimmediate consumption, easy digestion and daily defecation. The Indian cricket captain smiled from everywherewith a cell phone or cricket bat in hand. He smiled from the roof of the gloomy government apartments onEastern Metropolitan Bypass, he smiled from the edge of leather factories near Science City, he smiled overthe shoulder of the shopkeeper at Gariahat Market whose clothes do not sell and who has a loan to repay. Ipulled up the window of the taxi, as if glass could prevent refraction. Of smiles, of consumerism, of imagesthat mutilate memories.

The pujas of the popular Kolkata clubs are now like our cricketers. They are sponsored pujas. The tags ontheir sky-blue T-shirts quantify them. Tiny tags hang from the silk dresses of the idols. Durga, you mightfind, is sponsored by a body lotion and Mahisasur by a mobile phone, while Navami Bhog is courtesy ascotch-whisky company. Getting sponsorship is like catching a literary agent. You laugh your way to the bank,the media covers you, you are also on the longlist of numerous sponsored awards. For best idol, for bestpandal, for best lighting, for most original theme, for communal harmony, for best cultural program, for mostpopular puja. And Bodhon on Shasthi is your book launch party, "celebrity inauguration"being the keyword.

At home, I open the Puja Special issue of the Bengali magazine that we subscribe to. I have done thisbefore, sitting at the same table, every year of my adolescence and adulthood, and read every prose that itcontained. This year the magazine looks glossier, its prose emptier.

I let the magazine slip away from my hands. I let the Kolkata Pujas slip away from me.

This Puja I’m in Houston. One autumn afternoon leans against another. On the empty evenings of Shasthi,Saptami and Ashtami, I walk to the Half-Price bookstore in the city center, thumb through awell-thumbed Norman Mailer or Don Delillo novel, buy the book, sit at a cafeteria, and read. I read till it isevening enough, I walk back when the air is crisp, when the humidity is low, when the temperature feels likedewpoint.

At nights, I dream a single dream. I am not even sure if it is a dream. It is an image stuck to my eyeswhen I am asleep and to my eyelashes when I wake up. A little boy is walking with his mother, their fingershooked, their dreams conjoined, their laughter shared. As if they are friends. As if they have no worries. Asif they are happy, happy enough. She is wearing a sky-blue sari, he is in navy-blue shorts and a white shirt.They are walking along a snaky path embedded on the green, shaded by coconut trees. They can hear thedrumbeats, they can hear the conch shells, they can hear the ululations. The sun is a late-afternoon orange,which filters through the leaves to become zillion triangles on their bodies. Orange on blue and orange onwhite walk away along a snaky path, their fingers linked.

Houston, like many other American cities, has a large Bengali community, which celebrates Durga Puja as aweekend fiesta, their Shasthi on Friday evening, their Saptami, Ashtami and Navami mashedinto a Saturday, their Vijaya Dashami on Sunday. This Saturday afternoon, I went to this Puja with afriend, the one who had sent me that e-mail. Pushpanjali started on the mike. Between flower offerings,another voice took over the mike. "Flower-gulo floor-er upor pore gele pick up kore neben", itannounced in diasporic Bengali with a thick tongue-rolling accent. Navami Bhog was khichuri andpizzas, the khichuri for the NRIs and the pizzas for the NRI kids. A small stall at the corner of thehall sold Bengali cassettes, CDs and DVDs. I searched for the animated CD that plays Bengali teacher to NRIkids. I couldn’t find it.

I didn’t see any billboard, poster or banner, advertising or endorsing products, either inside or outsidethe temple. Sponsorship here is of another kind. Here, they sponsor the color of our lives. First, ourmulti-colored visas, then the green cards, then the blue passports. Corporate sponsorships drip into our livesthrough complex conduits. Like oil. Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Halliburton, Schlumberger, General Electric, Dow,Dupont and other companies form an invisible network that sponsors education, jobs, honeymoons, deaths andDurga Pujas. Their grants run departments - from creative writing to chemical engineering. The flowers theyrent us become our prayers, the accents they rent us become our voices, the words they rent us become ourprose, the cable channels they rent us become our world view.

In the evening, we eat at the university cafeteria. We order more than we can eat, pretending it is Puja.Pizzas, sandwiches, cakes, ice-creams. We dunk our cookies in our Earl Gray teas, pretending we are at theCalcutta Coffee House. And we laugh. We laugh at the comedy of Diaspora. We laugh at the funniness of exile.We laugh because laughter is the final weapon we can wield.

And in the middle of my laughter, I stop, because I realize that I am doubly exiled. That both my worldshave been taken hostage from me. That I shall live only as an observer, a stranger everywhere. That I have tosustain on the redeeming quality of words. That I have to seek asylum in the intimacy of language, in nounstouching adjectives, in clauses teasing clauses. That I have to trust the alchemical power of language, itsability to create counter-reality, to create counter-history.

For now, I shall return to only retrieve an image. For now, I shall let my memory get in the way of yourhistory. For now, I shall live with the image of the mother and the son, walking toward a pandal alonga snaky path, their fingers still hooked.

Saikat Chakraborty is a post-doctoral fellow at The University of Texas Medical School.