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Yesterday was a Family's Day Out for us. It was Mahasaptami and also Sunday.
It was the second successive Kitchen Holiday...very rare indeed for Sailaja.
We woke up leisurely and my son drove us to the nearby Cyberabad Bengali Association's Durga Puja in Miyapur. Cyberabad is the city area that grew up around the post-1990s Hi-Tech City. I guess their DP is only 5 years old; and its website was developed by an alumnus of the Kuchlachati College in the outskirts of IIT KGP, courtesy the Late Prof. G. S. Sanyal.
It was a humid day with a dumb and provoking sun. Apparently there was a cyclonic depression on the coast of Southern Bay of Bengal, and Hyderabad gets a side-effect.
As we entered the rather compact Puja Pandal, I bowed to Durga Mai from a distance and was looking for a place to sit dragging one of the plastic chairs from their heap. I am reluctant to enter the Pandal proper since I am claustrophobic and don't like crowds breathing down my neck. And I can't stand for more than a minute and feel naked without my chappals...slight peripheral neuritis in the feet.
So, I dragged a chair by the side of the heap of discarded chappals backing the wall of the pandal and sat down with a mild sun over my head. And newcomers rushing in to enter the pandal leaving their chappals outside, were looking at me curiously why this old nut is sitting beside the chappal heap in the sun...they thought I was the shoe-guard and may demand a rupee or two...
But they didn't know that I am an expert in the movement of the sun by virtue of spending a lifetime under the open skies at Harrys at IIT KGP.
In ten minutes, the hot sunshine quit my head and was on my thighs warming them and proceeding further down towards my knees. A young couple accompanying their very old mom were looking for a place to deposit her within a safe distance of the sound of dhakis...and dragged another chair to my side and seated her on it...she looked at me and smiled and we understood each other like custard and mustard.
By the time my son, Sailaja, and Ishani returned from within the pandal after the puja was halted, the sun was a meter away and I had about twenty neighbors, neighboranis, and urchins eating Bhog sitting on their plastic chairs...so it is a question of who bells the cat always...
Since I was not too keen on Bhog, my son brought some loochies and aloor dum from a stall...it had neither any highly visible aloo, nor even dum...it was a watery disappointment....the loochies were so so.
In the evening my son drove us to the far-off but authentic HBS (Hyderabad Bangali Samiti) at Indira Park. That is an area settled in by old-time Bengalis (pre-software boom) retired after decades of service in the dozens of Central Govt Establishments, Cantonment, Air Force, Army, Research Labs etc.
So, it looked pucca Bengali and rather posh.
As usual I sat down guarding the Durga Mai in her pandal on what were perhaps meant to be chairs for the policemen...but gray hairs have their advantages...a couple of policemen looked at me rather peevishly but I ignored them. After an hour my son fed me a couple of Mouchar Chops from a stall...they were just lovely.
And then there was this musical nite in the nearby huge enclosure with tip-top sound system and all sorts of electronic keyboards, guitars, synthesizers and stuff which were rather new to me. We sat down to enjoy the music and since this pandal was open on three sides, the sound dbs were increased to compensate for the losses through the open sides.
But then it started raining and everyone who was more interested in grub than music rushed in sitting and standing and practically closing the three open sides. And that was good...for I recalled that the human body had an absorption coefficient of quite a few sabines and that gave a reasonable reverberation and the sound was good...I mean the noise...because after a few apologetic soulful numbers of Kishore-da, the rest was mod rock and utterly boring for an old man like me...but my son and Ishani were enjoying and rocking...
It rained for an hour and it was past midnight before we reached home.
That is all the DP for young Hyderbadis...for there is only a 1-day holiday for the software and managment and banking sectors and that is on Dashami...so our outing ended with the weekend Shashti and Shaptami...but it was good and thoroughly enjoyable.
2013:
Durga Puja is back here again...and none too soon. We have been looking forward to it...little Ishani in particular.
Of late I haven't moved from Hyderabad at all. And rarely went out of our little locality except to my friend NP's place in Khairatabad once in a while. Weekdays I drive from our apartment complex to the nearby Lily School, Diptishrinagar Bus Stop, and the Petrol Station by the My Home Jewel. Otherwise I am confined to my bed on which sits my laptop on its stand in a corner.
But I am game to travel to the Durga Puja Pandals in October...a couple of hours drive in unruly traffic.
The attractions for me there are:
1. Dhaak: This is one music that hasn't suffered fusion for all the 50 years since I first heard it at KGP. It remains the same, like myself.
Here is Aniket in his inimitable description of his experience once:
2. Ambiance: For lay outsiders like me the best way to capture the ambiance of Bengal is to visit the nearest Durga Puja Pandal. I haven't traveled much, being a cot tomato, so I don't know if any other state has an equivalent site for their ambiance...other than Tamilnadu in its Classical Music Concerts.
And when the loochies arrived in a shiny synthetic plate I saw 8 of them stacked one above the other and was wondering what to do with them all. But when turned over, they turned out to be only 4...the other 4 were their mirror images in the glistening plate...a nice sales gimmick. Last year I couldn't quite see them at all due to cataract...and was untroubled.
At 11 when we were by the Cyber Towers, my son halted the car in the curb and asked us all to keep shut for half an hour...he had a trans-Atlantic meeting scheduled beforehand. And he took it on his wife's Samsung...
Last Laugh
Every once in a while, there was this huge gent coming up on the stage and announcing like the Soothsayer in Julius Caesar:
...Posted by Ishani
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Last night my son drove us to the oldest and biggest of the Bengali DPs in Secunderabad, held in the premises of Keys School.
And like Wordsworth, saw I ten thousand Bengali men, women and kids all dressed to kill, and felt at home.
I was mystified to find the tightest possible security...gate buzzers, police force from top to bottom, a couple of generator cars, a couple of fire-fighter trucks, ambulance vans, and a POLICE DOG!
And was wondering why Durga Mai needs so much protection in Secunderabad...afraid of Maoists, Taliban terrorists, Telengana activists?
No, she was as placid and victorious as ever, and as smiling...
I wondered if I lose my chappals, or swoon, or get struck down, or my wallet stolen, all these Kings men and their trucks would help put me back together...
No, sir...the mystery was soon dispelled when there was a big hubbub and rush and brush and we were told over the mike that His Excellency, the Governor of AP, has just now arrived and would be inaugurating the DP for the fifth time in a row by re-lighting the same old brass lamps.
After he left, all the bandobust was relaxed and we had a great time watching, listening, and eating begunis, mirchi bhajas, samose, chat, loochies, misti doi, pakoras, chole bhature, and enjoying the sights and sounds of Bengal.
It was midnight by the time we returned and crashed.
Three more days of fun and eating out.
I go to DP pandals to listen to the dhakia...
Yesterday was a Family's Day Out for us. It was Mahasaptami and also Sunday.
It was the second successive Kitchen Holiday...very rare indeed for Sailaja.
We woke up leisurely and my son drove us to the nearby Cyberabad Bengali Association's Durga Puja in Miyapur. Cyberabad is the city area that grew up around the post-1990s Hi-Tech City. I guess their DP is only 5 years old; and its website was developed by an alumnus of the Kuchlachati College in the outskirts of IIT KGP, courtesy the Late Prof. G. S. Sanyal.
It was a humid day with a dumb and provoking sun. Apparently there was a cyclonic depression on the coast of Southern Bay of Bengal, and Hyderabad gets a side-effect.
As we entered the rather compact Puja Pandal, I bowed to Durga Mai from a distance and was looking for a place to sit dragging one of the plastic chairs from their heap. I am reluctant to enter the Pandal proper since I am claustrophobic and don't like crowds breathing down my neck. And I can't stand for more than a minute and feel naked without my chappals...slight peripheral neuritis in the feet.
So, I dragged a chair by the side of the heap of discarded chappals backing the wall of the pandal and sat down with a mild sun over my head. And newcomers rushing in to enter the pandal leaving their chappals outside, were looking at me curiously why this old nut is sitting beside the chappal heap in the sun...they thought I was the shoe-guard and may demand a rupee or two...
But they didn't know that I am an expert in the movement of the sun by virtue of spending a lifetime under the open skies at Harrys at IIT KGP.
In ten minutes, the hot sunshine quit my head and was on my thighs warming them and proceeding further down towards my knees. A young couple accompanying their very old mom were looking for a place to deposit her within a safe distance of the sound of dhakis...and dragged another chair to my side and seated her on it...she looked at me and smiled and we understood each other like custard and mustard.
By the time my son, Sailaja, and Ishani returned from within the pandal after the puja was halted, the sun was a meter away and I had about twenty neighbors, neighboranis, and urchins eating Bhog sitting on their plastic chairs...so it is a question of who bells the cat always...
Since I was not too keen on Bhog, my son brought some loochies and aloor dum from a stall...it had neither any highly visible aloo, nor even dum...it was a watery disappointment....the loochies were so so.
In the evening my son drove us to the far-off but authentic HBS (Hyderabad Bangali Samiti) at Indira Park. That is an area settled in by old-time Bengalis (pre-software boom) retired after decades of service in the dozens of Central Govt Establishments, Cantonment, Air Force, Army, Research Labs etc.
So, it looked pucca Bengali and rather posh.
As usual I sat down guarding the Durga Mai in her pandal on what were perhaps meant to be chairs for the policemen...but gray hairs have their advantages...a couple of policemen looked at me rather peevishly but I ignored them. After an hour my son fed me a couple of Mouchar Chops from a stall...they were just lovely.
And then there was this musical nite in the nearby huge enclosure with tip-top sound system and all sorts of electronic keyboards, guitars, synthesizers and stuff which were rather new to me. We sat down to enjoy the music and since this pandal was open on three sides, the sound dbs were increased to compensate for the losses through the open sides.
But then it started raining and everyone who was more interested in grub than music rushed in sitting and standing and practically closing the three open sides. And that was good...for I recalled that the human body had an absorption coefficient of quite a few sabines and that gave a reasonable reverberation and the sound was good...I mean the noise...because after a few apologetic soulful numbers of Kishore-da, the rest was mod rock and utterly boring for an old man like me...but my son and Ishani were enjoying and rocking...
It rained for an hour and it was past midnight before we reached home.
That is all the DP for young Hyderbadis...for there is only a 1-day holiday for the software and managment and banking sectors and that is on Dashami...so our outing ended with the weekend Shashti and Shaptami...but it was good and thoroughly enjoyable.
2013:
Durga Puja is back here again...and none too soon. We have been looking forward to it...little Ishani in particular.
Of late I haven't moved from Hyderabad at all. And rarely went out of our little locality except to my friend NP's place in Khairatabad once in a while. Weekdays I drive from our apartment complex to the nearby Lily School, Diptishrinagar Bus Stop, and the Petrol Station by the My Home Jewel. Otherwise I am confined to my bed on which sits my laptop on its stand in a corner.
But I am game to travel to the Durga Puja Pandals in October...a couple of hours drive in unruly traffic.
The attractions for me there are:
1. Dhaak: This is one music that hasn't suffered fusion for all the 50 years since I first heard it at KGP. It remains the same, like myself.
Here is Aniket in his inimitable description of his experience once:
...The sound of the dhaak reminds me of a time when I was visiting my cousins in Delhi during DP, and the purohit had been gifted a bottle of scotch. He had finished half the bottle, and kept it somewhere, and then the bottle went missing. It transpired later that dhaaki had finished off the rest, raw, and the dhunuchi dancers had to literally face the music for what seemed like forever...
Here is the link my son sent just now of this evening's dhaak:
2. Ambiance: For lay outsiders like me the best way to capture the ambiance of Bengal is to visit the nearest Durga Puja Pandal. I haven't traveled much, being a cot tomato, so I don't know if any other state has an equivalent site for their ambiance...other than Tamilnadu in its Classical Music Concerts.
3. Food: One or two stalls of authentic Bengali food are found here. The rest dozen sell fusion biriyani, noodles, popcorn, chow mien, bottled soft drinks, and packed chips and kurkure.
So we were happy that, after the last few days of rains, we woke up to a morning sunny and dry. But it turned cloudy and drizzly at noon and that was a dampener. But the skies cleared up by the evening, perhaps because the supercyclone off the Orissa coast sucked up all the moisture.
So my son drove Sailaja, Ishani and me to the most famous DP Pandal here this evening.
I am agnostic and tone deaf but learned not to be put off by either, continuing my woolgathering in the midst of religion and music.
As my folks entered the Pandal looking for a closeup seat, I drifted to the tea-stall and had my cup of cheer.
And returned to the Pandal and sat on a broken chair outside, within reach of the Sound of Dhaaks. And could have spent a couple of hours undisturbed...the beats are ever uplifting.
After half an hour my son led us to the Bengali food stall and asked me what I would have...and I took no time answering:
"Loochi-Alur Dum and Mochar Chops"
And when the loochies arrived in a shiny synthetic plate I saw 8 of them stacked one above the other and was wondering what to do with them all. But when turned over, they turned out to be only 4...the other 4 were their mirror images in the glistening plate...a nice sales gimmick. Last year I couldn't quite see them at all due to cataract...and was untroubled.
Ishani relished her Mishti Doi and later, popcorn.
And then we went into the Entertainment Hall.
Wherever I go in India, whether into train compartments, or food-stall queues, or music halls, I find people attacked by the grab-and-hold virus for the nonce. I don't understand this well enough, having been a weakling since childhood, which handicapped me in the Great Indian Rat Race...but at the end of it all, I don't find I lost too much.
The musical extravaganza on the stage was again typical. So many instruments in the background, most of them drums, kettle and bass, and brass thalis taking the occasional spanking.
The introductions of the 'famous' local artistes took more time than the artistes did themselves.
Much hoo-haa and hoopla.
And with what end-result?
We once again had the old Bollywood number Satyam Sivam Sunderam...with a hint of Shattam, Shivam, Shundaram. Maybe a remix...I think that is what it is called.
And then there was this sudden lean thin gent with a mustache taking his seat in front of what I counted were a dozen tablas of all sizes and shapes. He was at the center of their semicircle. Apparently he was fusing his sundry tablas with the band-baja behind him. This reminded me of the glasses and cups of water at different levels we used to lay in front of us in our childhood, and beat them with a spoon, and showed off to our mom that ours was a Jalatarangini or whatever.
And this mod-tabalchi was uplifted and encouraged by a pony-tailed, ear-ringed person beside him strumming a guitar...maybe Hawaiian, or is it Zambian? I couldn't quite establish the sex of this guitarist, we sitting in the back row...but I was curious...Ishani had no doubts:
"Look, granpa, it is a MAN...look at his tummy!"
Anyhow, the item soon came to its inevitable end. And all the while I was noticing two girls (without doubt this time) in their late teens in the row in front of us. They were gossiping away for all of an hour totally undistracted by what went on on the stage...they were the true yogins...I was nowhere near them in total absorption.
We then took our paans and chai and left the place.
At 11 when we were by the Cyber Towers, my son halted the car in the curb and asked us all to keep shut for half an hour...he had a trans-Atlantic meeting scheduled beforehand. And he took it on his wife's Samsung...
That was the hi-tech end of our low-tech DP for the day...
Last Laugh
Every once in a while, there was this huge gent coming up on the stage and announcing like the Soothsayer in Julius Caesar:
"Beware of pick-pocketers! Beware of pick-pocketers!"
This reminded me of Prof Sikand who once had an argument with an Andhra gent who was narrating his quarrel with his neighbourer. Sikand objected:
"There are none called neighbourers...all you have are your neighbors"
And the gent rebuked Sikand:
"Haven't you heard of laborers? So what is wrong with neighbourers?"
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