Durga Puja: At Texas Ranch, Scent Of Memories From Faraway Home

Ishanee Chanda

When I was a child, my home was a classic, traditional Indian home. Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar would croon softly while my mother cooked goat and chicken and okra tossed in turmeric, softly humming the lyrics under her breath. Every event would mean donning the finest, glittering Indian attire.

Every holiday and birthday would warrant a trip to temple to eat fruit blessed by the idols in the center of the room, sourced from India, carved from wood and stone, bathed in ethereal belief and prayer of the devotees. As a family with roots in Odisha, we folded into the local Dallas Odia community like a coarse blanket – it was comfortable, but not always exactly right. It just so happened to chafe the most against our skin during Durga Puja.

Durga Puja is an annual, four-day festival between September and October that pays homage to the Hindu goddess Durga and celebrates her victory over Mahishasura. It is particularly celebrated in Eastern Indian states including West Bengal, Tripura, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, and Odisha, as well as by Hindus in Bangladesh. In places like Kolkata and Cuttack, the puja is performed in homes and in public places with hand-built and ornate stages, exuberant marches, beautiful dances, and music.

People recite scriptures in the streets, throw themselves into creating works of art, and feast on puja food until the stomach can take no more. My family in particular always speaks about going back to our home village for puja – sleeping underneath a halting ceiling fan, bathing like nymphs in the knee-deep river, and gossiping with cousins and aunts and uncles under smoke and stars. Even now, my cousins go back to the village for the celebration, almost a ritual from the days of my great grandfather. It was something I could never experience given the constraints of the American school year – until last October.

After the isolation of the pandemic, one couple came up with an idea to celebrate community in the example of their hometown – a puja for everyone, regardless of age, gender, language, or caste. Together, they raised funding from nearly a hundred families to put together Pratha, a celebration of Durga Puja at Bliss Ranch in Aubrey, Texas, with nearly 500 attendees. The three-day event had everything you could imagine – continuous worship ceremony, food-and-drink street vendors, assembly lines of delicious puja food, and hours of music, dance, and artwork.

The natural beauty of ranch, from the expansive patch of grass stretching acres in every direction to the quiet shimmer of the bordering pond reminded me of a hazy memory, of something that seemed like a starry, smoky village sky. Shoes were littered about with little ones running around, playing with colours and grass and tiny ladybugs. The all-you-can drink chai station was overrun with paper cups and little packets of sugar leaning on a field of styrofoam. The air felt like the ventilation of a small embassy, like a piece of a homeland had come briefly to be rooted and visit across the world. It was the closest I have ever come to feeling like that village memory was one I could share.

After the event, hundreds of people said the same; that this three-day event in the middle of northeast Texas was like a manifestation of India come true. From sindoor khela to dhunuchi naach, from kumari puja to homma, the event had turned a memory into brick and mortar. My mother had created a collection of paintings for the event that later sold to attendees that wanted desperately to take a little piece of the experience home. Some folks organized a literary journal of poems, memoirs, and artwork showcasing the talents of the community kids and adults alike. These were all tangible things we could hold in our hands, like village dirt and banana leaves.

Puja, I realized then, just feels like love seeping into the earth. We honour the water, the air, the gravel underneath our toes. We sing it to sleep and chant mantras into the fire. If that is what Durga Puja is, we experienced it then, for three days in Aubrey, Texas. I may have never been to Durga Puja in my village, but now I’ve been to Pratha; something tells me it feels back home.

Pratha 2024 will be celebrated at Bliss Ranch again this year from October 11th to the 13th. Registration is currently open for all three days. I will not make it to one family village this year for puja, but I will make it to another. I hope to see you, your family, and your loved ones there.

Shubha Durgautsav to you!

(By Arrangements With Perspective Bytes)