This year I spent first two days of puja with Purobi’s family at Kurmun. It is a nice family. Purobi and Baloram are a good host. Their son, Nonee, is a little chirpy boy who talks cricket and does cricketing acts whenever he gets an opportunity.
My Activa Honda took a little more than an hour to go there. I got stuck at a rail gate close to Reliance petrol pump for more than half an hour. Passenger, express and local trains passed during that time. (Luckily I did not have to confront boring goods trains.) The holiday-makers going far-away destinations boarded the trains. They took their preferred seats by the window. Wherever they found a little gathering outside, like the one at rail gate, they waved their hands at them. They were a mobile happiness. As the train sped away and the groan died down, a stillness hovered over the area. Sanskrit shlokas wafted in from all over the town and its suburbs as the priests conducted Saptomi puja at pandals. Dhak beatings accompanied their reading of shlokas over mics. Though we were kept stranded, none had any complaints. Kash flowers were swaying over a patch of land wayside. The closed rail gate got the magic touch of a Saptomi morning.
At Polashi, just a hand-shaking distance away from Kurmun, stray clouds cast away a fine drizzle against a fuzzy sun. Here again none was found complaining. It was not just a mere coincidence that a group of young men and women who stood under a chhatim tree to avoid getting wet sang out: Pichhone jhorichhe jharo jharo jol guru guru dea dake, mukhe eshe pore arun kiron chinno megher phnake..
Reaching Purobi’s house I found Nonee at his best! He wielded a toy gun, triggered it at his friends and reels of caps made a small serial sound of gunfire. The attacker and the attacked all fell to giggling.
I went to the Chondi Mandop with Baloram. Pushpanjoli had just ended. Women started leaving the place talking among themselves animatedly wearing colourful sarees. I went close to the idol and sat down beside the priest who by now was readying himself to go for a Chondipath. Later Baloram rode me around the village in his impeccably maintained two-wheeler. Purobi’s ancestral house we visited too. A vintage sight. It was the place where gajon started at Choitro. Purobi did not forget to inform when we came back and gorged upon fried rice and fish delicacies at lunch.
The four days of puja sped past like those passenger trains rattling away at rail gate. Nonee now must have been back to his studies. That group of young men and women who sang out Tagore lines must have been back to their jobs at offices at Salt Lake or Mumbai or Bangalore or overseas. Like the time after the galloping away of trains, a stillness is there in the air. This stillness is necessary to reflect what life essentially is. A switching on and off of surging and ebbing of joys. But one thing is permanent in life: joy or just the lack of it. There is not a single moment in life that does not celebrate joy. Life waits wistfully when it finds joy not hovering around. And this wait is synonymous with life. Shubho Bijoya to all my loved readers.