Sunderban Delta Publication

All Riverine civilisations worship  water as  the mother and reservoir of life on this planet. Earth or the soil is the other reservoir of life, when later life evolved on land. No wonder, when a human life ceases to exist, some civilisational ritual like the  Vedic  bestows respect to the leaving soul by merging ashes of mortal remains  into the  flowing river.  We often wonder how rituals of #durgapuja  in Bengal draws its cultural lineage from the human practices of a time period  which has no recorded but only inferred history. #MahaDashami, the last day of festive fervor and floating dreams of madness and desire, and artists shall put pale shades of color on their artworks. Here our eternal mother, Ma Durga, who drew life from river-water and river-bed  shall surrender into the river, while the drums would beat to a crescendo and the children of God chant and cry  'Asche Bochor Abar Hobe' ( Shall celebrate again in the coming year). That is the cycle of life - ashes to ash

  Ma Durga Calling When the first beats of Drum “ Dhanng… Kur… Kur… Dhang” hits the Indian TV network announcing the arrival of season of Durga puja, a sudden pain spread through my chest – a loss that I cannot recoup. Why do I love to live in my not-so- happy past. Am I, a slave of nostalgia I think there are millions like me who live a life out of memories. But I am grieving more that I cannot walk through these events again in this life – there is only one road that heads north.   Anyway, when I first heard the typical drummer’s beats today, I took a journey into the first date of mine with Goddess Durga and her family. It was a time when I just joined my Kindergarden school and was trying hard to pick up “ A for Apple and B for Bakwass”. Mid sixties   A street named  Shukias Street  in northern part of Calcutta had one Srimani’s house – the ancestral city joint for British time Babus who used to entertain the  Firengis  with dance shows and dramas. The British charm is long