Probashi is a term coined for Bengalis who reside outside their native homeland of Bengal. Four years of living in Delhi and I’m already resonant with the likes of this term.
When you’re a Bengali living away from home, you’re always on the lookout for tiny pieces of home. Be it the Bengali girl you moved into a rented flat with, or the corner shop uncle who speaks your language, or especially those five days of the year of pure joy and Pichhutan during Durga Pujo. He alongside his law-school batchmate Snigdhaneel Satpathy, always talked about the idea of a Puja at home. Banerjee and Satpathy had wanted to organise a Durga Puja but, as Banerjee recalls, law school left them with little time, money or space to make it happen. After graduating, some friends scattered across the country; others eventually found their way back to Delhi. The plan resurfaced, but it took time to turn it into a reality. What followed was not simply the organisation of an annual religious event. It was the gradual making of a household out of a group of friends. The work extended beyond the rituals: from planning and preparing for the puja to arranging the decor and cooking the bhog. For Malhotra, that connection has deepened over time.
The first puja was held in 2018, on a modest scale. Satpathy remembers the gap between what they hoped to raise and what they actually managed, “the budget was estimated at 60 to 70 thousand rupees, but we could raise only nearly Rs 25,000.
“We came to Delhi and realised that we really missed home,” said Satpathy. “You need a village to raise a child; you need to have a village to have a Durga Puja,” said Banerjee, describing an effort that was never meant to rest on one person. When he first joined, he said, he did not even know what a Barir Pujo was and now Malhotra can’t help but feel this “gaping hole” in his heart as “Maa Durga is leaving again and we’ll have to wait one full year to welcome her back to our home.”
In the five days of festivity, this home in CR Park becomes a community that has travelled different distances to get there. For some, it is a way to reconnect with Kolkata, the city they left behind. For others, it is an introduction to a culture they did not grow up with.
And for those who put the puja together, it is an undertaking that begins months before the rituals and brings friends, partners and families into the same fold.
Away from the crowded hustle bustle of CR Park pandals, lies this homely Durga Puja, quite literally at Priyadarshi Banerjee’s rented apartment in I-Block. The whole intention is that Maa stays at home with us, and renting a community hall is just not the same.”
He fondly told me, “The Pujo moves with us, wherever we go, the Pujo will happen there.
