There will be something missing in Durga Puja this year
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines festival thusly: a time of celebration marked by special observances; an often periodic celebration or programme of events or entertainment having a special focus; gaiety, conviviality. The West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee seems to have inadvertently coined a new meaning for the word.
“Ek maash toh hoye gelo…. Aami anurodh korbo ustobey phire aashun ( It’s been almost a month… I request you to return to the festival)", the chief minister told the citizens of her state. She was ruing that instead of counting down to the Durga Puja festival, as is usual at this time of the year, thousands were taking to the streets every day demanding justice for the doctor raped and murdered at the R.G.
Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on 9 August. The angry protest movement that shows no signs of abating has cast a pall over the usual build-up to Bengal’s biggest festival. Banerjee was trying to say that while she shared the protesters’ grief and outrage, thousands of small businesses, craftspersons and food vendors who rely on Durga Puja for a major chunk of their annual income were having a raw deal.
Return to the festive spirit, she said, while exhorting the CBI to deliver justice quickly. But those words reverberated in ways she did not imagine. In a scathing social media post essayist and lyricist Chandril Bhattacharya wondered if the chief minister was implying that once a festival starts, protests must cease.
He said it’s like a parent telling a child, “Alright, enough playing. It’s 7 o’clock. Stop your protest-protest game and sit down to study." The chief minster seemed to have given festivals a new definition, a new raison d’être,
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