Mixed bag

If one were stickler for tradition,and were to celebrate Kali Puja instead of Diwali,there wouldn’t be much fireworks and there would be very little time for sharing light-hearted banter with friends. “We celebrate Kali Puju in our ancestral home in Burdwan and it’s serious business. We hardly have time to burst crackers as much of our time is taken up with the puja rituals. The process of animal sacrifice itself has such a primordial feel about it. I feel like I’m in a different world when I participate in this puja,” says Saikat Bose,who works for a multinational company in Gurgaon.

Sambuddha Chaudhuri,an intern with the Midnapore Medical College agrees. “Kali Puja is not a light-hearted festival at all. It is all about ferocity of the goddess. Diwali on the other hand,celebrates triumph of good over evil and has metamorphosed into a more secular festival for urban Indians. It’s about people coming together and sharing. The whole feel of the festival is quite in contradiction to Kali Puja,” says Chaudhuri.

So is the urban Bengali right to embrace this more cosmopolitan avatar of the festival?

“There can be nothing right or wrong about celebrations. What’s wrong with celebrating Diwali in a more cosmopolitan manner? It’s a very pleasant marriage of tradition and culture. As far as Kali Puja is concerned,one has to understand that it’s primarily a religious festival and stands for a lot of other things. But at the end of the day they are all means to achieve the same end- happiness and peace,” sums up De Biswas.

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