he amounts may be staggering, but not everyone is happy. Arun Kumar Shastri, a former teacher of Sanskrit who now earns a living as a priest, bemoans the lack of spirituality that he says the pujas increasingly display. "At many pandals, the priests can't even perform the rituals on the idols because the organisers don't want them covered in garlands and other puja paraphernalia," he says, recounting how a colleague had to make do with performing the puja in front of a small vessel representing the goddess last year because the idols of Durga and her children were made of spices and hence could not be rearranged!
Traditionalists like Shastri also accuse puja organisers of eyeing the various awards handed out to outstanding pujas every year. At a rough count, there are some 40 major and minor awards that puja committees compete for, with some -- like the Asian Paints Sharad Samman and the Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation-Telegraph True Spirit Puja awards -- bringing with them not only heightened public interest but plum sponsorship deals as well.
Durga Puja is to Kolkata what the Mardi Gras is to New Orleans -- ask any reasonably well-informed Kolkatan and s/he will spout this one-liner. And there is a certain justice to this assertion, because the entire city seems to undergo a change in character during these four days. Huge crowds -- most of them on foot -- fill the streets 24/7, restaurants and shops are open till the early hours. Companies large and small go into an advertising frenzy as banners and display boards line every street and alleyway.
Image: Rina, a woman dressed as Goddess Durga, worshipped as 'living goddess' in a Kolkata pandal
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