Durga pooja and melodies of life
Manasi Krishna Sinha, New Delhi, India.
Here the seasonal ‘Sharat’ (Spring) comes, so is the blue sky painted with strands of white
clouds loitering around promulgating the onset of festive fever. The bunch of ‘kashful’ danc-
ing delicately on the rhythmic tune of cooling Autumn breeze. As the days are approaching,
the bubble of emotions ferrying through the doors of childhood days and its fascinating
memories. Like many of us, Durga pooja does not bring only festive colour to my otherwise
mundane life, it brings with it--- the bundle of memories of my childhood, the immense joy
of reaching out to those shades of memories that lay in cozy layers of my heart yet get alive
in times of celebrations. For me, it brings the feelings of togetherness, the boundless joy of
loving and caring, the sense of belonging and the breath of freshness that relives my tiny
little face from layers of stress and exhaustion. It reminds me of holding the freezing drop-
lets of paddy grass in the first light of the day to wash off my face that used to nourish my
soulful thirst. It echoes some forlorn melodies in my ears resounding some memorable fig-
ure or incident of past life. The whiffs of naphthalene oozing out from the piled up stock of
kurtas and sarees--reminding tacitly its distinct little story of significance. The glitzy kurta
that my grandmother stitched for me when she was alive; that mama’s gifted sari that
loudly singled out itself all these years in the wardrobe relishing the touch of her smell of
waist and hands; or those little boxes that are packed with my school notebooks, sketches,
broken pencils, post cards, mindless letters and many more—all become alive again.