Thursday, September 24, 2009

Happy Durga Puja :-) :-)

Its been a long time since my last post on this blog. I have never been away from my blog for such a long period except when I have had exams. But, this time, there were neither exams nor any other engagement. In fact, life was very smooth and I had a good time going clothes shopping with my parents. But somehow, the eagerness to post something new was missing. On several occasions, I tried to convince myself to write something as there was no dearth of topics. Yet, even after thinking of writing something new, I just couldn't bring myself to do it at the end of the day.

But today, I want to write; I want to open my heart out. I am very happy today and so is the world around me. Its that time of the year again when Kolkata has geared up for the Durga Puja. Colourful pandals, lovely lights, good food and smiling faces....its a dream world altogether!
To get lost in this world of dreams, I went pandal hopping with my friends yesterday. :-) I had, even after being born and brought up in this city, gone and taken a grand tour of pandals a very few times. So, yesterday's experience was special. There were four of us- Amrita, Shreyasi, Sukanya and I, and we had decided to make best use of Amrita's car. Little did we know that travelling in her car would turn out to be our biggest drawback yesterday; a drawback, thanks to her driver, who would benefit the passenger community a lot by changing his occupation immediately. He didn't know any of the common routes and when we tried to direct him by taking directions from our parents through cellphones, he simply wouldn't listen.
After a while, we decided that the best course would be to take rickshaws or to walk after stopping at a particular pandal. And, that was when we enjoyed ourselves the most because we were on our own. We visited the nearby pandals by taking directions from local people. We took our lunch at a chinese restaurant past 4 o'clock. By 7 o'clock in the evening, we had visited 12 pandals in South Kolkata and Salt Lake and felt that the beginning to our Puja had been awesome.
Wish all of you a very Happy Durga Puja!

6 comments:

RB said...

Warm wishes! :-)

R said...

Being on your own is fun, right? :)

Happy Durga Puja to you too. For me it's usually always about puri chana halwa in my part of the country!

Unknown said...

Happy pujo.
I miss home so much this time of the year. Will call for Bijoya.

nanny said...

A blog that made me use Google once again! Thanks.
Now I know a bit about Durga Puja.
However I could not find much about how it is celebrated. How do you and your family celebrate it? And are you free from school those days?
I also wonder how you all returned back home after pandal hopping. Did you call up the driver to pick you up; and did he manage to find you?????
Have happy days!
Greetings!

Dhrubo said...

Glad to see you back.

Butterfly said...

@Richa
Same to you. :-)

@Rohit
Yeah, being on our own was great. We felt very confident and grown-up!:-)

@Woodsmoke
We too want to talk to you. You're the only person whom we haven't wished Subho Bijoya yet. :-(

@Nanny
You're welcome.:-)
Durga Puja is basically a 5-day festival in West Bengal.Durga Puja is celebrated by making idols of Goddess Durga and her sons and daughters, Ganesh, Kartik, Lakshmi and Saraswati.Experienced people make these idols and people of different puja committees take these idols to their respective puja pandals. The pandals are a big attraction during the pujas and the streets are brilliantly decorated with lights. Many people celebrate by visiting the pandals but others, like us, prefer to leave Kolkata and make a trip somewhere. Yes, all schools, including mine, and all offices are closed during the Pujas.:-)

The driver never managed to find us. When he was given a call and asked to come with the car to a certain place, he said that he didn't know the place, which by the way, is very popular here. So, we had to go back to His Majesty taking rickshaws again!But, we came back home in the car only.:-)


@Dhrubo
:-)