Pet Pujari

The story

You understand a city through its food, and Kolkata at Pujo is the best menu on earth.

You were the child who knew where the phuchka stall was before you knew where the pandal was.

It's not that you don't love the pandals. You do. It's that every pandal in Kolkata is next to something, and you know what. The sabeki protima at Bagbazar comes with a fair full of telebhaja. Shobhabazar is a short walk from Mitra Café, where the fish kabiraji has been fried the same way since 1920. Ahiritola is on the way to Niranjan Agar's egg devil: a whole egg wrapped in mince and crumbs, invented by a cook who taught himself. Your route is a food map with pandals on it. You have never once been lost.

Your Pujo has a structure, like any serious devotion. Morning: luchi and alur dom at home, out of respect. One o'clock: bhog, wherever a para will have you: khichuri and labra off a sal leaf, the best meal of the year, and it's free. Four o'clock: a cabin in the North, cutlets and chops at a marble table. Eight: biryani, with the potato, obviously, and anyone who argues about the potato can find another friend. Eleven: Park Circus. Two in the morning: a roll, eaten walking, because the Night Owls have to eat too and someone has to show them where.

Your friends call you the Snack Minister. The group chat asks you before it asks Google Maps. You hold opinions about which sweet shop makes the real rosogolla, and you have never lost that argument, because you bring samples.

Then Dashami and the Bijoya rounds, which are the Pet Pujari's Olympics. Every relative, every house: a plate of nimki, narkel naru, a sandesh, a glass of water, and one more rosogolla to be polite. You go to all of them. It would be rude not to.

Thakur dekha is the excuse. It has always been the excuse. The goddess, you suspect, understands.