Tag: Dusshera

Categories
Poetry

Autumn in India

By Avantika Vijay Singh

Autumn, 
The bridge between nature’s seasons,
Summer and winter,
Heat and cold,
The cooling whites and the fiery oranges
So beautifully reflected in the shiuli’s* colours. 

Autumn, when the shiuli carpets the ground in legion,
Signifying the advent of the Goddess Durga in Sharad season,
Corresponding to the months of Ashwin (September-October).
Dusshera, too, comes in this season.
Both celebrate the victory of good over evil and corruption…
Maa Durga (the Goddess) triumphed over Mahisasur, the demon,
While Lord Rama triumphed over Ravana.

Autumn, that celebrates both festivals with great revelry
Turning our minds towards triumphing over evil
In our own lives, and evil within us.
The evil of ego that is the cause of suffering.
Ego, that is the demon that persuades us to discriminate with frivolity,
Between man and nature leading to a loss of biodiversity,
Between man and man leading to a false state of superiority.
Stemming from a mind of inferiority,
Judging against age, weight, skin colour, poverty and other such absurdity. 

Autumn, 
The time of the Shiuli flower
The time that reminds us to put our minds in favour
Of the divine and all that they have to teach us with fervour.
In the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikhs, 
Guru Arjan says, that when we contemplate on the divine,
In our life manifest immense virtues with blessings combined
Akin to precious jewels like the flowers of the wish-fulfilling Harshringar*.

*Shiuli is also known as parijat, harshringar, and night jasmine.

Avantika Vijay Singh is the author of Flowing…in the river of Life and Dancing Motes of Starlight.

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Categories
A Wonderful World

Festivals of Happiness

Durga Puja, a community- based festival. Courtesy: Creative Commons

Long ago as children, we looked forward to the autumnal festival of Durga Puja. For those who lived outside Bengal, there was no holiday but it was still a break, a season filled with joie de vivre, when family and friends would gather to celebrate the community-based festival, Durga Puja. Parallelly, many from diverse Indian cultures celebrated Navratri — also to do with Durga. On the last day of the Durga Puja, when the Goddess is said to head home, North Indians and Nepalese and some in Myanmar celebrate Dusshera or Dashain, marking the victory of Rama over Ravana, a victory he achieved by praying to the same Goddess. Perhaps, myriads of festivals bloom in this season as grains would have been harvested and people would have had the leisure to celebrate.

Over time, Durga Puja continues as important as Christmas for Bengalis worldwide, though it evolved only a few centuries ago. For the diaspora, this festival, declared “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” by UNESCO, is a source of joy. While devotees welcome the Goddess Durga and her children home, sons and daughters living away would use this event as a reason to visit their parents. Often, special journals featuring writings of greats, like Satyajit Ray, Tagore, Syed Mujtaba Ali, Nazrul would be circulated in the spirit of the festival.

The story around the festival gives out that like an immigrant, the married Goddess who lived with her husband, Shiva, would visit her parent’s home for five days. Her advent was called Agomoni. Aruna Chakravarti contends in her essay, Durga’s Agomoni “is an expression, pure and simple, of the everyday life of women in a rural community –their joys and sorrows; hopes and fears”. While some war and kill in the name of religion, as in the recent Middle Eastern conflict, Chakravarti, has given us an essay which shows how folk festivities in Bengal revelled in syncretism. Their origins were more primal than defined by the tenets of organised religion. And people celebrated the occasion together despite differences in beliefs, enjoying — sometimes even traveling. In that spirit, Somdatta Mandal has brought us travel writings by Tagore laced with humour. The spirit continues to be rekindled by writings of Tagore’s student, Syed Mujtaba Ali, and an interview with his translator, Nazes Afroz.

We start this special edition with translations of two writers who continue to be part of the syncretic celebrations beyond their lives, Tagore and Nazrul. Professor Fakrul Alam brings to us the theme of homecoming explored by Nazrul and Tagore describes the spirit that colours this mellow season of Autumn

Poetry

Nazrul’s Kon Kule Aaj Bhirlo Tori  ( On which shore has my boat moored today?), translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam, explores the theme of spiritual homecoming . Click here to read.

Tagore’s Amra Bedhechhi Kasher Guchho (We have Tied Bunches of Kash), translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty, is a hymn to the spirit of autumn which heralds the festival of Durga Puja. Click here to read.

Prose

In The Oral Traditions of Bengal: Story and Song, Aruna Chakravarti describes the syncretic culture of Bengal through its folk music and oral traditions. Click here to read.

Somdatta Mandal translates from Bengali Travels & Holidays: Humour from Rabindranath. Both the essay and letters are around travel, a favourite past time among Bengalis, especially during this festival. Click here to read.

An excerpt of In a Land Far From Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan by Syed Mujtaba Ali, translated by Nazes Afroz. Click here to read.

Interview

A conversation with Nazes Afroz, former BBC editor, along with a brief introduction to his new translations of Syed Mujtaba Ali’s Tales of a Voyager (Jolay Dangay). Click here to read.

Durga by Jamini Roy (1887-1972)
Durga(Kalighat Pattachitra, Bengal folk art)
Categories
A Wonderful World

Where “Divides of Class, Religion & Ethnicities Collapse”

Painting of Durga Puja. Courtesy: Creative Commons
Wherever I look, a golden light 
Suffuses a vision of holidays,
The festive sun rises in the woods
Of puja* blossoms drenched in gold rays. 
             -- Tagore, Eshechhe Sarat

This has been a favourite poem of many who grew up reading Tagore, lines that capture the joy and abandon of the spirit that embodies the celebration of Durga Puja, a festival that many Bengalis deem as important as Christmas, Chinese New Year, Diwali or Eid. It is a major celebration in Bengal and large parts of the sub-continent, though not in all parts.

The reason that reviving the lore associated with this fiesta has become very important is that it centres around women. Given the situation in Iran, where the battle over how to wear headscarves has turned bloody, murderous and violent, celebrating an empowered woman, even if mythical, takes precedence over all else. Mythology has it that Durga was empowered by weapons given to her by various deities, all of who were men, and then, she did what all the male Gods failed to do — destroyed a demon called Mahisasur. Rama too prayed to Durga for victory around this time. And on Bijoya Doushami, the last day of the Durga Puja, some celebrate Rama’s victory over Ravana and call it Dusshera or Dashain.

Taking up this theme of the narratives around Durga Puja and how it has been made into an “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” by UNESCO is Meenakshi Malhotra’s essay on the festival. Part of the citation reads: “During the event [Durga Puja], the divides of class, religion and ethnicities collapse….” 

To bring to you a flavour of the Puja, we have translations of poetry by Tagore describing the season and of a poet who was writing before Rabindranath, Michael Madhusdan Dutt, by Ratnottama Sengupta, verses exploring the grief of parting Durga’s mother expresses as her daughter returns to her husband’s home. This is also a festival of homecoming for, like Durga, those living far from their homes return to the heart of their families. Rituparna Mukherjee has woven a story specially around this aspect of the festival. Journals in Bengal, traditionally, brought out special editions with writings of eminent persons, like Satyajit Ray. We have an interview with a writer who wrote a book on Satyajit Ray, an actor called Barun Chanda, to bring a flavour of that tradition along with the translation of a celebrated contemporary Bengali writer, Prafulla Roy, by Aruna Chakravarti. We hope you enjoy savouring our Durga Puja Special.

Poetry

Eshechhe Sarat (Autumn) , describing the season of Durga Puja, by Tagore has been translated from Bengali by Mitali Chakravarty. Click here to read. 

Bijoya Doushumi, a poem on the last day of Durga Puja, by the famous poet, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, has been translated from Bengali by Ratnottama Sengupta. Click here to read.

Prose

A Mother, a Daughter & a Demon Slayer?, an essay by Meenakshi Malhotra, checks out the festival of Durga Puja against the concept of women empowerment. Click here to read.

Homecoming by Rituparna Mukherjee is a poignant story about homecoming during Durga Puja. Click here to read.

Nagmati by Prafulla Roy has been translated from Bengali as Snake Maiden by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read. 

Interview

Meet Barun Chanda, an actor who started his career as the lead protagonist of a Satyajit Ray film and now is a bi-lingual writer of fiction and more recently, a non-fiction published by Om Books International, Satyajit Ray:The Man Who Knew Too Much in conversation Click here to read.