She...

And this time the wait has presumably been the longest for me. There is a certain unnamed aroma I've always linked with Her. Probably its the product of sweets and incense, flowers and clay..but I've always called it 'Her' smell, which floats around since days before Her actual arrival playing the messenger bird of the homecoming. That idiosyncratic smell of Her arrival has never left to enchant any of my fractions, but this time it seemed all too irresistible. Too heavy a feeling to carry around. And now that She's here, that She's finally perceivable from my balcony, it seems all too surreal..to perceive, to smell, or to reach out for a touch.

This is seemingly the last Durga Puja of my 20 year stay in Kolkata. And next year around this time I'll probably be missing classes to stay near home, near Her. But what I'll really miss is the countdown to the festival..the moment since when monsoon starts drifting away giving way to cottony clouds..when a clayey aroma wanders between us, implying that She's on Her way..and the mushrooming shopping destinations which go berserk with their offers. I'll miss the framing of the pandals at almost every corner, which first bring about Her smell..and Her arrival at midnight amidst some euphoric dhaker baddi, when on such an event, once a kid told me.."Didi, Dugga Puja eshe galo!"These will always frame the bits and pieces of my life that can never be shrouded under ignorance or oblivion, irrespective of how much tears they bring about. And there'll always be some little things like the occassional dhaker baddi and vibrant dhunuchi naach, whose mere thought will convey the smell of my city to whichever corner I am. Leaving apart all the political and economic changes that it imperatively requires, I'd really wish to stay alive to see Kolkata exactly this way during the Durga Puja ever and forever down the millennia. And seek that ethereal smell through and through my marrows that plays with me so often, and that, which has and always will help me to keep myself spirited, effevescent and alive.