Para Kid

The story

The best pandal in Kolkata is the one where people know your name.

You know the dhaaki's name.

He comes from a village in Nadia, and he has played your para's Pujo for longer than you've been alive. Every year around Panchami somebody from the committee goes down to Sealdah station to find him among the others, and every year he's there, and every year he asks after your mother.

Your Pujo doesn't start on Shashthi. It starts in August at the first committee meeting, where the same three people argue about the same budget. It continues through the evenings when the decorators put up the bamboo, and the afternoon the protima arrives on a truck and the whole para comes out to watch her carried in, slowly, a dozen hands on the frame.

Then the five days, which are not five days but one long day with short naps.

On Ashtami morning you're in the anjali queue in new clothes with a fist of flowers, between an aunty who has known you since you were four and a cousin who flew in from Bengaluru last night. Afterwards you serve bhog: khichuri, labra, beguni and a spoon of chutney on sal-leaf plates, to anyone who walks in. In the evening there's the function: somebody's niece reciting Sukumar Ray, somebody's uncle singing the same Manna Dey song as last year, and it's still good. At night you sit on a red plastic chair with the people you grew up with and watch the whole city pass through.

Your college friends come to see "your" Pujo, and they suddenly understand why you never want to go anywhere else.

On Dashami you cry a little. Everyone does. Then the Bijoya hugs, the sweets, the walk behind the truck to the ghat, and the para's loudest shout of the year: asche bochor abar hobe.

It will happen again next year. You'll be there. You always are.