This puja brings in an array of jargons when it comes to pandal-hopping: No-Entry zone, social-distancing, sanitising and getting masked. The sequence of all these occasions a consequence – anjali from home. It is a safe option available to puja-devotees to ride over Corona and riding roughshod over its threat. So the Bengalees, this time around, play it safe: offering flowers to Goddess Durga on-line.
Madhu babu, my next-door neighbour, is avowedly most devout devotee of the Goddess in the whole Ulhas. Earlier, he hardly found time to eat or bathe properly as he volunteered to get himself busy with collecting chanda, forced collection of money door-to-door to put it bluntly, dangling a non-negotiable apologetic smile, hands folded.
This year is a different ball-game altogether. To justify his name, Madhu babu runs an overflow of sweetened blood in his body-system; so he largely keeps himself indoors to keep him out of bounds for Corona. It must be said with a sense of great relief and supreme satisfaction (Madhu babu is my next-door neighbour, don’t forget!) that he is so far successful in his combat-Corona mission.
Madhu babu sent for me last night. I was in for a huge surprise. These are Corona times and he is asking me to visit him?! My wonder was itself taken for a ride very shortly. He said that I need not take trouble to enter his home. Rather, I should head for a shop, he specified, to buy him a shiny-showy new-arrival cell-phone from a multinational make-in –India eye-popping company. Immediately after the buy, he would transfer the money in my account on production of the bill. He asked me not to forget to get the bill done in his name. I followed him word by word, coma to coma, full-stop to full-stop. Doing it I realised why he avoided on-line purchase. The commission this electronic- goods catering shop provides is whopping much more than those giants commanding e-market. How it is possible is only known to Madhu babu alone, perhaps. Though, however, I did not check what was happening to other over-crowding customers (again I realise why Madhu babu avoided himself going out to the shop. How sagacious a man can get!).
When I came back with a neighbour’s-waste-of-energy-and-owner’s-pride object, Madhu babu switched on the outer light before even I touched his gate and asked me to put both the phone and the bill on top of a pillar the gate was attached with. As I retreated few steps closer my gate, he came downstairs and collected those things after spraying his utmost from a healthy-looking sanitiser bottle. In a few moments my mobile announced the inflow of an amount, that cost Madhu babu, hour back, for his matchless mobile.
Hour later, Madhu babu went berserk as he exercised his lung power to its blasting full. He hay-hayed the entire evening. His new phone had gone life-less. No amount of effort could bring it to life.
It was the sanitiser that seeped into the system, I guessed and did it in.
Madhu babu would have to continue his chest-beating till entire next morning as Saptami anjali, he planned on-line, went hay-wire. I mulled.
Sanity should not be sanitised. Madhu babu’s wife shouted at long last when the wall clock started striking sharply twelve on a clouds-crowding night.