While All The Rest celebrate Diwali, the Bong world prefers to (call it) and celebrate Kali Pujo. For dumbasses who haven’t caught on yet, it happens to be be an event which involves the worshipping of Goddess Kali – which, uh, if I’m not wrong, happens to be an avatar of Goddess Durga (except that she’s supposed to be in a more cranky mood).
The festivities start late in the evening, and go on till around 3am in the morning. Funds which are left over from Durga Pujo are utilized for holding Kali Pujo. Mostly it’s the women-folk who hang around from early evening and participate in the actual worship; they also keep a fast which entails eating nothing – not even water – but I believe that’s taking the jol khabo joke a bit too far. (In Bengali language, you don’t ‘drink’ water – you ‘eat’ it.)
Kids and men-folk act very un-Bong (i.e., burst crackers) and then stroll in later. There are fireworks-related competitions too involving making homemade anars (called tubri in Bengali) and then lighting them and checking which one spouts the highest stream of firework. (Damn, this stuff is difficult to explain in English. You get it, don’t you? I wish I’d a Hindi blog.) Since they’ve nothing else to do after that, most stay on to watch the movie screenings which are held by the pujo committees. Pervs like Vivek would be thinking, “So while are the women are worshipping, guys are watching movies late at night. Right…”. (Un)fortunately, the movies happen to be Hollywood flicks (not the American Pie variety) ot silly Bong stuff.
The day night morning is wrapped up with food from community kitchens. At around 3am in the morning. YOU can wrap up reading this post now by viewing pictures from Kali Pujo 2008.