Durga Puja- My two Rupee Note

It was Maha Ashtami yesterday i.e. 8th day of Navratri festival. After coming back from office, I thought of spending the beautiful autumn evening at the nearby Puja Pendal organised by local Bengali crowd in Noida. It was my first experience of a Puja Pendal in Delhi and that too after so many years since my college days. I must say that I was not at all disappointed. Thanks to local Bengali crowd, they have done a good job in creating a great festival atmosphere in the field, filled with crowd from all classes and must be from all provinces apart from Bengal. I was enthralled like a small child and patted my own back for the good decision to be there.

I went around the field peeping into the stalls. There were quite a few eating joints selling all kinds of food, sweets and drinks. I could see stalls with balloon and plastic toys. I am not sure how come these plastic toys and tinkers are never seen in any store; rather they pop up only in such festivals.

The best was when I came across two stalls facing each other busy in marketing cars. One was with smart posters of new cars and the other one filled with two liner advertisements for used cars. This was something new that I did not come across before. Anyway, it is the capital of the country and also Formula 1 is round the corner. So, why not?

I felt young again, when being pushed around in the crowd and also tried to give myself a few pushes. The smell of dust, hot foodies and sweat gave me a reassurance of the festival atmosphere.

After an hour or so, I thought that it is enough of bliss in one evening and let me go back to my den. On my way back, my childhood days flashed across my memory lane. We stayed in a small township then and every year we had a weeklong Puja vacation in school. Local social committee used to put up a Puja Pendal which was very near to my house. In fact it was just a stone's throw away. Same festive atmosphere was getting created with pendal, stalls, carousals, food stalls, bookshops and magic shacks. I also remember a giant wheel with a height bar at the ticket gate to show that it was only meant for bigger children. I used to reach the pendal by 10am along with some of my friends from my school. We used to mere go around the field looking at stalls, jumping around, watching others riding giant wheel and all that. No money and no buying. And then late afternoon we came home for lunch, slept and waited for the evening. Evenings were special as more crowd, more dust, more noise, more light and a two rupee note in my pocket. My father used to give me a two rupee note to spend as a special Puja pocket money. What an elation then to have a two rupee note in the pocket and the walking style changed in the evening. It was more king-like.

And it is a fact that some of the evenings I was not spending that much even.

I looked at the stars in the moonlit sky and looked for my late father among them as read in the fable stories. I wished he is still around to give me again a two rupee note in the evening as special Puja pocket money. I wanted to get back to that king-like feeling and walk around the Puja pendal whole evening till I get tired having the note in my pocket unspent.