‘Alu Posto’ and the Strange Visitor
Tapan Das ([email protected])
Category: Fiction
It was ‘Maha Ashtami’ and as usual we all had assembled near the ‘Puja Pandal’ to offer our prayers
to ‘Devi Durga’ and one round of anjali had just concluded when my eyes fell on a young girl. She
was still offering her prayers but with a different posture. She raised both her arms with palms open
and head bowing down, as if invoking the Goddess. This unconventional posture reminded me of
reading somewhere that the worshipping methods of Greco-Roman deities and those of the Hindu
pantheon had many similarities.
The dusky girl probably was of 15 or 16 years of age, she had sharp features with deep large eyes
which attracted me the most. Though not very beautiful, her face had an aura which made her stand
out in the crowd .She was wearing a simple white saree with a red border. It was clumsily worn, as if
it was her first attempt to wear a saree. Suddenly her eyes fell on me and I felt a bit embarrassed – she
might think that I had been staring! I looked away, but my thoughts were still revolving around the
stories that I had read about a particular Greek race who offered their prayers to the Sun God in a
similar manner.
As I was manning a particular gate as a volunteer at the pandal, she approached me and asked me
if she could have ‘khichuri bhog’ (prasad) at noon for free – or should she pay for it? ‘No no you can
have the bhog for free at 1 pm ma’, I promptly told her. ‘Thank you uncle’, she replied. Her Bangla
had an accent, a typical anglicized flavour. However, I could see that she wanted to say something
more. As Suman relieved me at the gate, I thought I should go and talk to the girl and find out more
about her. I was curious.
She was nowhere to be seen. Her peculiar large eyes began to haunt me and I was sure that her
face was trying to convey something which I had failed to decipher.
I took Saachi, my daughter, along with me and started looking for her an BB