Durga Puja in London

Cold start

10:00 With the days becoming shorter, and the nights becoming cooler, an overnight frost in prospect, the day surely started a tad cold. But I didn't expect that to extend to people's behaviour. "Cold shoulder" just got a bit more graphic in the Bengali community in East London. First I was scouring the Bow Road and Mile End Road, trying to locate a "Rhonda Grove". Is it just pot luck, or all the people that I choose to ask for directions were lurking over my shoulders. Even the local postman excused himself. Maybe because I was a young Asian male with 3 days' old facial hair and a small rucksack.

12:00 Went to Upton Park next. I had two addresses to visit, one seemed like a private address with a closed door - so much for a warm welcome. The other was Upton Park centre. It had an open door and an invisible cold stone wall. I was with another group of 10 guys. The organizers hang around us, may be trying to cover us. We were welcome to donate or buy their products. Puja ... well there are a lot of Pujas in Calcutta .. sorry you mean here, well, it's not time yet, come back 2 hours later. Thank you very much.

Weather brightening up

13:00 The sky was generally clear and with the sun out, I tried to cheer myself up with some music from my iPod and a can of Pepsi. It is one long journey from Upton Park in East London to Tooting in South London. But I decided to take a break in Aldgate East to see the Puja on Commercial Street. As it is, the area is a bit confusing with roads running on all sides. I decided to put my skills at work, but somehoe got the wrong end of the stick ..err map. Asked a Londoner, and later to my horror he directed me to Commercial Road instead of Commercial Street. The day was getting worse by the minute. And then I decided to trust my (map) instincts and within 10 minutes realised I am going round in circles and had to get off at the right exit. Reached Sanatan Association and finally saw my first glimpse of Durga. There was a decent crowd and the Puja was under way.



14:00 Spirits up, I now set out to conquer the south. Tooting, here I come. Tooting Bec tube station and Bina Hal are literally on opposite sides of the road. But the entrance to Bina Hall is so inconspicuous that you may be tempted to compare it with a nedle in a haystack (it wasn't really that bad)! The Puja at Bina Hall also drew a decent crowd. Good thing to see was that I was not the only one who was not "part of the local community". There were others like me, some with family, and all were welcome to join in and offer prayers to Mother Durga.



After covering the Bina Hall Puja, I strolled down the Upper Tooting Road to another address that I had. Like East Ham in East London, this part of South London also boasts of a large non-British populace - multicultural, multilingual. I reached the Sivayagum Hall on 180 Upper Tooting Road. This seemed to be the most well organised Puja so far ... and what I found interesting is that apart from the Bengalis, the Indians, there were some British people, who were curious (and brave) to peek around, intrigued by all the sound of drums the dressed up people and general air of festivity inside the building.

15:00 After this, I sauntered overto the third address in the same area. My notes said it was a church, and I was right. But Durga Puja or no Durga Puja, I am scarred from my morning's experience, and I am not taking any chances walking into an apparently deserted chrrch with the doors closed (but not locked) in a very mixed community. For all I know, I could be suddenly sorrounded by 10 yobs on the quiet side street and no window would probably open if I die bleeding on the sidewalk. I think I have seen enough in Tooting and decided to head for the city centre.

Late afternoon sulk

The weather suddenly started to sulk again. With dark clouds, coming up, the temperature taking a plunge and the wind picking up a tad. Of course you wouldn't know that if you are inside the tube. The tube is akin to a giant fermenting tube. With temperatures in high 20's (or low 30's) and high humidity and packed, I sometimes felt Calcutta was better. It doesn't have trains every two minutes, and may be it is more crowded, but hey, if you are lucky you get to stand right under the blower and the air cools you down. Anyway, I reached Camden Centre, just off King's Cross St Pancras.

16:00 I was worried that I have to search blind/ask, as I had no map of the area. I picked up I road on instinct (well, bright guesswork OK) and moved towards Camden Town. While I was admiring the new Eurostart station on St Pancras the Camden Centre was just beside me. It apparently had no enty on the main road and then saw the tell-tale signs - Bengalis in Puja gear streaming out of a side street. I knew where to go. This was the biggest Puja that I have seen today, with a huge crowd. And once you are inside the hall, if you were told you were in Calcutta, you might just believe me. It was close, including the dustbins with overflowing food wastes (yes, I did see them and I did note them, nothing ever changes does it!).


And just outside the hall, on the footpath was this amazing beauty. Dressed in red skirt with black soft top and shining jewellery! She was too god to be real. I sauntered over to have a closer look at the goodies and take a few snaps! Enjoy them folks!

Time to return

17:00 It's been a long day, with a lot of travel (and specially after you consider that we have been trying to woo Lady Luck to help us with our cards until 3am this morning). So I decided to return home. With things being as they are, TFL spoilt my day further by announcing "There are severe delays on the Central line due to an earlier signal failure at Stratford. Passengers are advised to look for alternative routes." And so I started exploring alternative routes ...

If there's only one thing that I had to choose as unique between Pujas in Calcutta and Pujas in London, I will say that in London, the people are almost ashamed to fly their flag high. It is almost like a secret society performing their rites behind the brick walls away from the prying eyes of strangers. What Puja taught me was to embrace one and all, to welcome people and share the joys. Bengalis in London seems to have missed that chapter.

If there's anything more that you would like to know, ping me at deartapas@gmail.com. View slideshow of the Durga Puja snaps.

Big Brother is watching

The good old days

I come from a sleepy little village in rural Bengal. Childhood was normal, but one thing I knew pretty early on - nobody beyond the 10km radius of my village knew where it was. So all address requests were answered with a short description of general direction with respect to other known reference point (something like "South of Heaven, West of Hell"). Anyway, as a young boy I absolutely hated it. As I grew up, I learnt to live with it and dreamed that someday I will put it on the map.

And then I grew up and the world has changed

One day, I got a rude shock though - someone had already done that. And not only for my village for all small and big towns in the world. Welcome to the days of Google Maps, Wikimapia and scores of others. The idea was, if it is on earth, it is on the map. And then came other Google products which meant not only the earth, but the sky and stars above it were waiting to be explored on your computer.

In itself, nobody could see much wrong with it. After all the great explorers of 17th and 18th centuries had been charting the waters of deep seas assiduously. What's wrong in having such cartographic data available to the finger tips (unless you are using the stylus on yuor XDA) of common man? But something hit home hard last week.

Gautam under the "bodhi" tree

I was browsing the maps in satellite mode to check out a particular location in London before I went there (talk about virtual tourism!). A curious bystander just commented "it's amazing what they have done, I can see me mum's car parked in the backyard." Well, of course he was referring to the satellite image that Google had placed on the map site. I almost reflexively said "Yeah! Bet you that someday, looking at that you would be able to say if she is at home or not".
He was ofcourse unimpressed and thought that I was a day-dreamer. And then the point hit home hard. Shit! some day, not in the distant future, the hardware and the software would be capable enough to send live streaming data for all locations around the earth, 24 by 7, 365 days a year. Like it or not, the future is more Orwellian than the past.

Imagine the possibilities

Thinking a little bit more about it, this is nothing special. This is the natural progression of things. I had seen the days where there was as many number of telephones in my village as there are moons in the night sky. Today, not only does a huge number of houses have them, a majority also has got mobile phones and some have more than one. These devices are so powerful that you can use the chip inside it to make secure payment transactions, watch live vedeo streams, act as a GPS locator and of course, make and receive phone calls. in the old days, you never knew who made a call as the whole village calls and receives calls from one single number. Today, it doesn't matter where you are and how well you are hidden, if someone wants to find out who made what call to whom and when, you can just do it.

I can give loads of examples - your debit/credit card contains more information than probably you want the taxman to know, your browser contains patterns of your browsing history which you don't want your boss to find out. With ever increasing technologicl progress, we are more and more exposed.

Is it a good thing?

As with most things in life, there is no one answer to it. It all depends on how you use it. But I guess the difficult part is what choice would people have to remain anonymous? It is not true that everybody who wishes to remain anonymous are plotting an attack, it could be just that you want an extra portion of chips when you are on a strict diet. I am not saying it is like this but imagine this - You are on a strict diet, you must avoid all fatty food, but you can't resist that portion of chips. You buy it and pay by your card. The card processor sorts your transactions and sends all food related items to your dietician. Next thing you know is that you have an angry doctor eating your head off. You don't want that, do you? So, what's wrong in being able to purchase that fries "anonymously"?

I guess the most vulnerable are the lesser informed individuals. They would give off information without knowing they are doing it, and then some of the more learned and corrupt members of the society will plunder that. With more technology being made available, there would be more such "transparency" and more opportunity for the sharks to get their kill. Probably, Big Brother is not big enough. Sadly, the losers would be the people who do not need to hack others information but do not want being hacked either. They have to learn to manage more passwords and PINs and codes all of which should be strong (i.e. gibberish to the human intelligence).