In this poignant personal essay, Sushil Poddar revisits childhood memories of Durga Puja, his late mother, and a scooter that evokes an enduring bond, revealing how festivals keep love alive across generations.

Durga Puja is one of India's most significant religious and cultural festivals, celebrating Goddess Durga's victory over Mahishasura and symbolising the triumph of good over evil. In Kolkata and across Bengal, the festival brings communities together through devotion, elaborate pandals, artistic installations, traditional music and shared celebrations. Recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2021, Durga Puja also represents the homecoming of the Goddess, connecting faith, family, memory and cultural identity across generations.

Childhood Memories of Dussehra in Patna

The best way to hide an emotion is to keep it in plain sight. Like everyone, my emotion for my late mother is boundless, surfacing through anecdotal details while unburying my past.

Dussehra, amongst many festivals, always brings with it a trenchant panorama of my childhood days. Why I am also reminded of those days is probably an inner call to pay tribute to moments which have gone by, reliving them, remembering them.

In the big joint family I come from, I was sometimes entrusted with the responsibility of taking my mother on a scooter for pandal visits on Dussehra, even though I was the youngest in the family. These visits usually took place late at night, when the footfalls of visitors would be fewer. Maa would be riding pillion, and the son would drive her to all the known puja pandals from west to east Patna. When I would finally kick-start Babooji’s scooter after visiting the last idol at the famous Patandevi at Marufganj, Maa would surreptitiously bless me with a pristine smile on her face while her eyes bleared after late-night pandal-hopping. That facial gleam has stayed with me; probably, it will for eternity, I am sure. She keeps speaking to me sotto voce every Dussehra.

Durga Puja in Kolkata: A Journey Through Emotions

This Dussehra, after years, we thought of doing some pandal-hopping. A couple of better-known pandals of Kolkata we zeroed in on visiting. With the help of a Good Samaritan friend, hassle-free visits were organised to the famous Suruchi Sangha and Tridhara in bustling south-central Kolkata, amid massive crowds thronging to take darshan of the idols. Though these idols were simply surreal and the ambience aggrandising, I, at both places, found something amiss while the visitors were gung-ho on sighting the heavenly spectacle, even if only for a few seconds.

A Mother, a Scooter and a Lasting Memory

After visiting the idol at Tridhara, the last stop of the evening, when we hurtled towards the vehicle parked a little distance away, my gaze was transfixed on a scooter parked in a corner of the narrow street. Concomitantly, the imagery of Maa after visiting the last pandal at Marufganj cathartically flashed before my eyes. I felt an inexplicable calmness. I felt as if I were tethered to the scooter. I felt as if I would take refuge in that scooter impetuously. Capriciously, I felt like stepping towards the scooter to kick-start it and drive my Maa, in her autumn years, as my pillion, to revel in the quietness of the night yet one more time. It rang true for a few fleeting seconds. When I finally left that spot, I rubbernecked at the scooter as the driver of my vehicle jostled to drive through the copious vehicles clogging the narrow alley, which was chock-a-block with drab buildings inundated with flashy lights all over. I felt an unsettling twitch at leaving Maa behind, near that scooter.

Remembering a Mother Through Goddess Durga

The ecstasy of Maa being a pillion on this Dussehra, too, turned out to be ephemeral. But yes, like Durga, she will be realised eternally in my heart.