Vishwakarma Puja

17th of September is an auspicious day. Vishwakarma Puja is celebrated all over the country on this day. Unlike other festivals, the date of this Puja does not change from year to year. Lord Vishwakarma, we have been told, was the  (and still is) the architect of the gods, the builder of  the magnificent structures and palaces in which the gods happily live with their spouses.

We, the ordinary mortals, believe that he is the primeval god of all machinery and tools from a small screw to a space shuttle! All and sundry engineering instruments and tools are worshipped by the mechanics, operators and owners. After the Puja is over and the Prasad distributed, starts, what we Bengalis call, the Pet-puja. This consists of demolishing the piping hot khichoori of moong daal, mutton kosha, papad fry, tomato chutney and of course rasgollas. This is perhaps the only day in the year, when the top boss and the regular workers all take their food together, customarily seated cross legged on the floor.

 At Calcutta on this day was held the famous kite flying competitions. In our childhood this was this was the event  of the year, and there was hardly a terrace which did not boast of one or two boys(even girls) flying kites, and trying their best to out manoeuvre the others by cutting through their strings

The build up to the Puja started a couple of weeks earlier, with trial runs. Assorted kites of different colours, shapes, sizes and designs were flown from the roof tops. They carried different names like, mukhpora,pet katha,chadiaal. There were so many technical terms like ruddir maanja,karnik,ek bogga,lethe khela,tene khela, etc. It will take a concise Bengali to English dictionary to accommodate the entire gamut of the jargons. Neither do I possess the capacity or the courage to attempt such a herculean task.

As our terrace was one of the highest in the area, quite a few friends and acquaintances used to come and take advantage of the height. One year we had a noted sitarist who was our neighbour Shantada’s guru, as one of the guests. He was simply brilliant! With one kite he ripped apart the frontal sky. At another time, my mother had cooked rasgollas which were a tad tough. One of my friends observed that they would serve as perfect pellets to be thrown at people who tried to snatch the strings of others’ kites, within their reach. This sinful act was known as hafta, comparable to foul deserving a red card in football.

 I had an immediate neighbour, Shantibabu, who was my age and temperament. We used to fly kites together from our terrace, taking turns to hold the lattai (type of a spindle, to hold the string) and the other person would fly the kite. In a particular year,Shantibabu and I decided to prepare our own manja or specially honed string, to slice through others’. We ground old bottles of vicks vaporub, sulekha ink, and kissan squash to fine powder. A strong paste was prepared from extracts of various plants (there was no feviquick then to come to our aid). Two thrown away bamboo poles, used for dusting cobwebs, were placed at two ends of our terrace. While I went on releasing the string from the lattai, Shantibabu went on applying the paste as we completed round after round of laborious walk from one pole to the other in the scorching sun. By evening we found that the manja was dry and the tenor and texture appeared to be just right! This was to be our main weapon for the great combat of tomorrow. After being satisfied with the tests (cutting and bruising our fingers at multiple places in the process), we re-wound it on the lattai.

We could hardly sleep that night. Morning saw us atop the terrace and thankfully the sky was bereft of any clouds. We began our battle with great expectations. Unfortunately, the quality of the manaja was not good enough. One after the other we went on losing kites. Thoroughly disappointed we wound our home spun manja and shifted to professional ones. This led to a considerable improvement in our performance. At the end of the day we took stock of the situation. It was 7 losses to 11 wins. A disappointing start to our manja manufacturing careers.

In the following year, when the season was a fledgling, we tried our luck with our home made manja of last year. Well what do you know? In a span of 3/4 days we had sliced through the strings of all the kites of Maniktolla, without a single loss of our own!

Alas, kite flying is no more, that Calcutta is no more! We do not hear the skies reverberate with the shrieks of  Bho- mara and Bho-katta.