Basanti Puja: Walking the memory lanes!

This was my first visit to Kamakhya Mandir during Navratri! Somewhere in my mind, I wished it always and this year it happened!

Chaitra Navaratri is when Basanti Puja is celebrated. Basant is spring and this Navratri is celebrated in spring(March/April).

Goddess Basanti is our Kuladevi and four days of Basanti Puja from Saptami to Dashami, was being performed in our home since a long time, back from the days of my grand parents. Due to several factors this Puja is now being done at our Panda’s place in Kamakhya, Guwahati. Ma and Baba, Baba alone or my brother have been present at Kamakhya during the Pujas since the time the Pujas are being held there. This was a first for me, however!

Several memories came alive this time, memories of Puja at home and how Ma and Baba would manage the proceedings for all the four days, waking up early and tidying up everything before going to sleep. Baba would sleep in the Puja area so to check that the deeya kept burning. Relatives would throng the house and amidst the puja activities, we children had our share of fun with our cousins.

The setting was similar here. The Panda’s mother, wife and sisters did the Puja preparations from prasad to bhog and it took me back to the time when Ma would be busy from morning cleaning the Puja room, the utensils and arrange everything before the Purohit’s arrival, the neighbourhood aunts would help cut the fruits and vegetables and I would be doing the garlands and the chandan paste. How I wished Ma was with us in this physical plane today and participating in the Puja.

The evening Aarti again brought back many memories, of our home, of our people and of a life we lived and perhaps cannot return to, or can we?

The atmosphere at Kamakhya was mesmeric, to say the least. People from all walks of life rushing for the divine darshan indicated how spirituality is still alive in spite of whatever technological progresses we have made. The long queues told the story of faith and devotion, and my eyes swelled up in tears of joy knowing how lucky I am to be born in this country and to be witnessing this miracle! The lights, the flowers, the rings of the bells, the chanting of the mantras are too divine to be captured in words!

Sitting by the balcony in the afternoon and watching people come and go made me feel nostalgic, it took me to the Saradiya Durga puja days of our childhood and our colony where people visited the Puja Pandal throughout the day. The similarity of the environment, the freshness in the air, the ladies in beautiful sarees, the young children in new dresses, grandparents with grandchildren all took me to back to my Shillong childhood and a feeling of a strange void came within me. The small roadside shops, the greetings of the young and the old, the familiar exchanges, of people knowing each other, all connected back to the place of my birth and the place I grew up in! I wanted to go back to those days, feel the air, see the people, talk to my Ma, dress up, walk the streets, go Puja hopping, find the old faces, talk to them...

The mountains, the rains, the fog, the cool air made me shake and shiver from inside, the thought that those days of the past are perhaps gone for ever made me want to cry! There was this little realisation that this is what life is about, changes and uncertainties and maybe the way to live is to live in the present! Easily said than done, but the glorious childhood that we have lived, the rituals we have known, the festivities we have been part of as a family and as a community cannot just go away!

The sounds of Aarti from early morning and till late evenings again jolted my insides and made me want to go back to those old days, or go there once again in the near future with that same kind of childhood enthusiasm. May be that’s another dream Maa Basanti will fulfil…to get back there and participate in the festivities with childlike enthusiasm!

One day!