Pujo Romantic

The story

Everything important happens in a look.

You have a Pujo song.

Not a playlist. One song, and it changes every few years, and each one is a different autumn. Right now it might be Anupam Roy. It used to be something your mother hummed from Saptapadi: ei path jodi na shesh hoy, if only this road would never end. You understood it at eleven. You understand it better now.

For you, Pujo has always been a love story. Sometimes with a person. Sometimes with the city itself, the way it looks at dusk on Ashtami, red borders everywhere, the whole of Kolkata dressed as if it's expecting someone.

You know the rules nobody writes down. That anjali is the best place to stand next to someone without it meaning anything, officially. That a plate of phuchka shared between two people is a complete sentence. That the long way home through the North Kolkata lanes, in a rickshaw, is always worth it. That College Square at night, when the lights lie on the water, is the most romantic place in the city, and you will argue with anyone who says otherwise.

You've watched love stories begin at a pandal gate. You've watched them end on Dashami, at the ghat, in silence, which is its own kind of beautiful. The phuchka-kaku outside the big pandal has seen a thousand of them. You like to think he remembers yours.

Even in the years you went alone, it was a love story. The kaash was out along the Rajarhat roadside, the sky was that particular autumn blue, and from somebody's balcony came Tagore's song about tying bundles of kaash for the goddess: amra bedhechhi kasher guchchho. You stood still for a minute. That counts.

Some people have a Pujo. You have a Pujo and a feeling about it, and the feeling has a name, and the name doesn't translate: মনকেমন.