“Ya devi sarvabhuteshu”…. the gravelly voice of the narrator woke me from the warm coccoon of dream drugged sleep. I snuggled deeper into the quilt, fine tuning my ear for the narration to continue. Nothing could capture the magic of the chill of the softly greying skies, as the Sun laboured to settle into another smooth October dew dropped morning each year and the magic remained unchanged. By the time “jayangh dehi yasho dehi…. filled the air, the birds would be chirping and my grandmother would have started the earthen stove blazing.

Things changed after Mahalaya (the Divine Light). The sky was more blue, the air scented (even today, in the soot and grime of Delhi, I can take in whiffs of that perfumed air) and the mind joyful. A true bengali feeling!

We lived close to the main road in Ranchi – a sleepy town, once the summer capital of the British, it slumbered like a fat catterpillar in the winter sun. That was before it got invaded and ripped by the cosmopolitan culture cutting across the country! The Durga mandir, sitting on the heart of the town, palpitated with life as the dhols played ‘dhin taka dhin, dhinak dhinak’. I could feel the tremble in my heart, squeezing the muscles and then relaxing it in a spurt of joyous blood. The sound of the dhols reverberated and spun around my mind, spurred by the image of the magnificient diety, presiding over all, in a haze of incensed cloud. My awe was complete as I jostled for space along with my friends, decked up in crackling new dresses, sniffing the warm perfume of bodies, the air buzzing with the drone of thousand voices.

Phuchka (golgappa) wallahs lined the roads, interspersed by stalls hawking paper crocodiles which slithered near your feet, toy guns creating a ruckus with their “pha phat phat”, and gods and goddesses gleaming behind framed glasses. We bought all, although I left the finances to Tanu, my truest and most blessed friend. I would always buy a lipsticked, heavily ornamented framed photograph of a Lakshmi or a Saraswati for my grandmother. She would promptly put it up on the wooden puja dias. I always bought the pink gooey hawai mithai – (candy floss). I loved the various shapes it came in and the ‘gone in a wink taste’ – leaving a saccharine induced tongue.

As the day progressed to a ripened afternoon, our tired feet would make way home, to sleep behind wooden shaded windows, dreaming wondrous dreams of another few days of extended delirious enjoyment. Such powder puffs of wonderful memories… i just remembered this one today.