Durga Puja and Dussehra Memoirs

Take 5 - Mrigank Das

I have one little vignette about Dussehra Puja that comes from the small town of Burla in Western Orissa where we lived for about 5 years when I was a young lad. It is a smaller city compared to Bhubaneswar or Cuttack or even its bigger twin city Sambalpur but by no means insignificant as it houses two very premier institutions of learning, the Medical College and an Engineering College both ranked among the top two or three in Orissa. As a result of its proximity to the Madhya Pradesh border, Dussehra in Burla was a fusion of the traditional Durga Devi pandals and also the more North Indian custom of burning an effigy of the ten-headed demon king Ravana in a fairground on the south side of the town. As a young lad after doing the rounds of the usual Durga Devi pandals in the various Medical and Engineering college hostels which were always done with their usual splendor and variety and where my dad always got a few extra goodies owing to his status as a Medical college professor,  our tradition was to go out to the nocturnal Vijaydashami effigy burning which was in a fairground on the other side of the huge canal that flowed down from the majestic Hirakud dam that separated the quaint, compact, and yet charming market areas of Burla from the Medical campus where we resided. The sights and sounds and smells of the pyrotechnics and the bonhomie of the large crowd of onlookers that would cheer and clap as the various parts of the Demon king's grotesque effigy came careening down with crackles and spits of fire was a childhood thrill that was distinct and unique from the celebrations in the cities like Bhubaneswar and Cuttack on the eastern part of the state.