Ashtamis have always been special for me. When I was younger, I used to go to the local pandal to offer my Anjali and probably to pray for the results that were due after the holidays or may be something more worldly, like a new cap-gun for the next Kalipuja. When I grew into a teenager, those mornings seemed a little brighter. The obvious added attraction were the members of the other gender. One of my friends once said, "Never look at a girl on Ashtami or Saraswati puja, They all look extremely beautiful on those two occasions. Even if you ogle a few, never fall in love!"
As if I never knew that, as if I was going to fall in love with all of them, as if I was going to listen to him! So, I continued to satisfy my visual domain. I hope they enjoyed that too. I didn't mean to disturb them, but if one of them actually felt so, then, "Shit! I missed you!"
There have been Ashtamis when I've spent the whole day with the woman I considered the love of my life, at least for that year, at least for that puja! There have been Ashtamis on which I have had my birthday and there was no special woman with me. So I drank to glory, did all sorts of stuff. Thanks to my friends who had to tolerate me on those days! I've had a Ashtami when I was sitting at the topmost box of a giant wheel, with the woman I was trying to impress. It stopped there for half an hour or so due to some maintenance problem. I was happy because my rival was waiting for us on the ground, he had a high BP. Hell, I liked giant wheels on that day, I was dead-scared of them before that!
But lately, I have hardly had a Ashtami to remember. These days I spend my puja days sitting idle at home or partying with some chosen friends. I hardly have a puja to remember now, they all look the same. But I can't go out of town during those days either, for that would be an act of betrayal to my beloved city. I used to pandal-hop, but my friends have grown old and it's no fun doing it alone. Young-guns wont take me with them because nobody wants a spoilsport. After all, it's their time to explore things, their way.
But as the puja approaches near, I suddenly remember a certain Dashami. I have special memories of Dashamis, those antics on the truck known as Vashan-dance and the Siddhi trips to follow. The Siddhi turned into alcohol and the antics became a convenient way to convey machismo to fellow-women! Life! Anyway, this is not one of those.
This is one piece of memory that came back to me today, like a forgotten piece of an incomplete fabric. Not that the fabric looked bad without it but it just adds a new colour to the whole spectrum. I wanted to meet this certain young lady on one of the puja days. It didn't seem convenient for any of us during the main puja days. So she asked me to come to Maddox Square on Dashami to meet her. I wasn't too happy with the idea, but I hardly had an option when she said it's either that way or nothing. I've always chosen madness over nothingness!
Most of us have never been to Maddox Square on Dashami. Maddox Square is famous for its addas on the other puja days, which now has become a bit too crowded and drunk. The calm adda spot has started giving in to commercial hot-spots and the allies of new capital. Weirdly enough, all these lasts till Nabami. I noticed it on that Dashami.
She said she'll come to play vermilion (Sindur-Khela, as it is popularly known) with friends. Though it's an activity for married women, many unmarried young girls join the game. The idea wasn't new to me, but I didn't expect her to be so enthusiastic about it. Anyway, I reached the spot and found her. Unlike the other puja days, it was a gathering of hardly hundred people, wasn't at all that difficult to find her.
She was busy playing, saw me and asked me to wait. And there I was, seated on a wooden plank, which was placed there probably to serve as a make shift stage for some show last night or may be the floor of a shop that has already been dismantled. I sat there for some half an hour. She played with her friends and strangers sometimes and I watched her. As the festival was coming to an end and the day surrendered to the evening gloom, I watched her,clad in the traditional bengali red-bordered white sari, smudged in vermilion and gloomy orange twilight, that mixed the last rays of the sun with the halogen rays of the half-lit street lamps. There she was, hardly ten feet away from me, the perfect picture of youth and glory and there was I, seated on the signs of destruction and gloom, marked by the scattered paper cups, torn newspapers and fliers used for sitting, dismantled shops and what not. She'll come to me, sit with me for a few minutes, exchange a few words and then she'll be gone again, lost in the strangers and my eyes tried their best to follow her in the crowd till she came back the next time. If and when I find her and she sees me, she'll throw a few glances that meant eternity to me.
This went on for quite some time. But as the lights started to turn into mere street-lamps and the sun was already gone, I witnessed a moment pass by. I knew inside me this woman will never be mine, she doesn't even have the slightest idea about my feelings, she's too used to attention and she is just enjoying the game. I was some twenty five-ish, she was just twenty-ish. We two were too different to be together, may be she had someone else in mind. But the sheer impossibility of the situation kind of helped the image to stay on in my mind. I knew this puja is over, this relation wont work out, but much more than that was the feeling that this moment of madness that has driven me to this place, that signifies both destruction and rejuvenation, will not be here anymore. All that is here and now, will soon be gone. Everything I may have expected is just a wishful thinking and I wont mourn their passage. But all that is here and now will never be with me ever again, is what mattered. She finally got out of the play and came to me, with two friends. Asked me to take a few snaps, I did. Sat beside me and exchanged some soft words. But by then the moment had passed, the madness had already subsided. Logic has taken its place. I took a taxi and dropped her at Dakshini, she wanted to walk past someone's house. I hardly cared. Next day was her birthday.
I thought this incident had left me that very day, but it has proved that things that I keep doing just for nothing, just to reassure myself that I'm still alive in this concrete jungle, to watch myself committing the same mistakes over and over again, are the memories that define my existence, by coming back to me on a Mahalaya morning. As I post this to my blog, the old obsolete radio in my parent's room has already started broadcasting the age old voice that any bengali will recognise, even sitting in some distant part of the world. But I don't have the moral binding to listen to it now. I'll play the downloaded MP3 sometime during the day, at my convenience.
