Saraswati Puja — what it means to me
Saraswati — the goddess of knowledge and education, is a highly respected goddess in middle-class Bengali families where education is the first and only thing you can achieve in life. It gets worse if you are born and raised in a family of educators — school teachers in my case. This one Puja/ festival that happens long after Durga Puja in lovely early spring month when we are just getting out of the cold weather days (minimum temperatures, of course, doesn’t go below 10C) and everything looks bright and beautiful. This is when you hear the Indian Koels singing day and night to attract a mate, some of the wild native plants flowering, and you know finally you can eat “kool”/ber/ Zizyphus fruits that you are waiting for a year. Yes, in our childhood, we were told that one can’t eat kool until the Saraswati Puja because you need to offer that to the Saraswati first. Do you know what will happen otherwise? You will not pass your exams in school or won’t get good marks in exams — this is the yelling from the adult you hear, if you get in the act of eating kool before the Puja. Yes, I told you everything revolves around education. That means doing well in school, going to college, university, and getting a good job (mostly a government job that pays you moderately, but you will never lose your job). Or else become a school teacher or a professor — nothing anyone can imagine beyond these boundaries. But shhh…, as a rebellious kid, I would go around with a few boys in the hood to collect kool and eat without adults’ knowledge. Yeah, there were still a few big Zizyphus trees around in our hood.
So you can imagine the importance of goddess Saraswati in our family! On the night before the Puja, you have to get an idol from the local idol makers’ home/shop. It can be a big one with hay, clay, and wood structures or a small one made in a mold with clay and then painted. On the day of the Basant Panchami, the morning of the Puja, you have to get up early, I mean early at dawn. Collect flowers from the hood, then a cold morning bath with turmeric paste and mustard oil mixture paste massaged on your body. Then starts the preparation for the puja. You help the adults bring your books to put next to the goddess.
Oh! This is the only occasion where young ones could wear sarees. So we used to be very excited and looking forward to being all cladded in a yellow saree. When I was 5/6 years old, I had a saree made for little girls to wear during Saraswati Puja day.
One big thing about Saraswati Puja is that you have to stack books, mainly those textbooks that you are doing well in school next to the idol. In my case, it was always the math book. Of course, if I get a chance, I would quietly put a children’s magazine, like Shuktara or Anandomela or a novel mixed in the stacks of books. And you have to have a few clay inkpots and pens made of special grass. Oh, and you need to get at least one Polash/dhak/Butea monosperma flower. That’s a must-have flower for the offerings to Saraswati. In the morning, you have to be on an empty stomach until the Puja is done by a Brahmin priest, and you are done with prayers (Anjali) to the goddess. Your priest would appear at home with some notebook-type book where supposedly mantras are written in Sanskrit (in Bangla script). Most of those jokers (I mean those priests) don’t know how to pronounce Sanskrit words or meanings. So you have to sit there, listen to the pronounced mantras by the priest, and can’t tell them anything about their knowledge of Sanskrit! You have to break your fasting with fruit prasad (fruits and excellent stuff offerings). And then the fun begins. The girls (and a couple of boys) would walk around visiting the neighborhood pujas.
And oh, this is one Puja that happens in every school. So visit your school, eat some prasad, hang out with friends and come back. Even the school Puja’s were fun. The students from the upper classes were in charge of the Saraswati puja. We all eagerly waited to be in class 9 or ten to be the leaders of this puja. And then my aunt had a strict order that we should be back by noon to eat lunch and participate in the afternoon/evening pujas. What an exciting day we kids would have, especially for me; it was the day you didn’t have to study. Yeah, you don’t have to sit with textbooks and study. You don’t get yelled at by your aunt or elders for not studying or, in my case, hiding a children’s magazine or a novel under your textbook and pretending to study.
All of those for just one day. The next day as we immerse the idols in water (Ganga river for us). You have to be back home and go back to your boring daily routine of studying for school. Fun would be all over. But hey, those were our fun days.
As an atheist and living in the US, our kids never participated in such fun activities. They do have some small idol of Saraswati, known about the goddess of knowledge- Saraswati. And heard from me about. Saraswati puja probably the Nth number of times. They know about the rituals and stuff. In 2011 and 2013, they were in Calcutta. So have seen and participated in Saraswati Pujas at home, at our other home — my aunt’s house. I played with flying kites with my uncles.
Last year, when I was there, my sister, who was recovering from a life-changing surgery, wanted to have a Puja at home. So, the responsibility of buying an idol and arranging the Puja was all on me. My friend and I decided to visit Kumartoli (the neighborhood of idol makers in the city, where everyone makes idols for selling. Walking around in the lanes and bylanes of this North Calcutta neighborhood has been on my bucket list. So the opportunity of buying an idol from Kumartuli is like a dream come true. We were a bit worried about the pandemic but decided to protect ourselves with double maskings, plenty of sanities, and careful. We went to Kumartuli, spent the entire morning and afternoon trying to decide on idols to buy…. Too many choices, too many beautiful pieces of work by famous award-winning artists. Too many questions to ask and listen to stories (for me) while taking pics with my iPhone only. But I guess the excitement was too much. I promised to go back there and buy a few art pieces for myself. I even paid advance money to buy a Saraswati. Well, then came the second wave of COVID. We had two people at home with high comorbidity and immune suppressants; I could not go back to see the Durga Puja idol making, and nor could I buy the stuff that I wanted. Oh well, next time, I mean in the days when we won’t have a pandemic like this one!
