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The Devi and the Ring of the Nibelung:

Notes From an Erstwhile

Durga Puja in Frankfurt, Germany

--Svanhild Wall

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Sindoor-Clad Valkyrie

There was a time here in Frankfurt when my husband and a good friend of ours used
to talk about something complicated called “Bose-Einstein Condensates.” My husband and
our friend are both German, and ex-physicists into the bargain, so it was always Ein-shtein.
And Bosay. “Bose,” I'd say. Satyen Bose. E silent. Anglicised writing of a Bangla name.
German enunciation of a Bengali name.

That's a little bit what the Durga Puja, celebrated here annually, looks like. Bong in
spirit, German in feel. The celebrations are organised mainly by a Bengali Association
consisting of 150-odd members, and although Frankfurt is reputed to be more multiculti than
most German cities, you don't quite get the desi feel of San Jose in the Silicon Valley or the
London hub of Southall. That's partly because many Indian immigrants here aren't living in
what desis themselves in the States archly call the ghetto. And a fair number of Bengalis here
have German spouses or partners—or a parent, for that matter. Still, at the rehearsals for the
Puja cultural programmes, which begin about a month before the Pujas, inevitably the lingua
franca turns out to be English rather than Bangla. No surprises there. The gymnastics of
German grammar reminds many Indians of tales of horror from having learnt Sanskrit, for
anyone brave enough to have tried. Many of the kids though revel in their guttural Teutonic
“r”s and “ch”s, which pepper their grammatically flawless Bangla. A few kids even speak
American, as international schools are the realistic option for globetrotter parents who must
grow new shoots in different countries every three to four years. Small wonder then, that
goosebumps of alarming nostalgia can be triggered off by a sudden tune-in to the whiny notes
of a harmonium, or the shockingly familiar sight of gnarly tabla skin being scrubbed with
talcum powder. This is a plaza of everywhere, but nowhere.

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Maybe it's no accident that the Pujas here are held in a public hall at a place totally
unlike the artsy Kolkata pandals that coax you away to the slender bronzed goddesses of Bali
or the robust ruins of Machu Picchu. Welcome, instead, to our humble sanctuary bordering
Frankfurt's notorious red-light district, the Bahnhofsviertel. This is a sleaze paradise so tame
to look at, that on sunny afternoons you can often spot a well-endowed mashima stocking up
on her panch phoron at the friendly Sardarji's shop.

That mashima had good reason to finish up her grocery shopping in good time,
because her Pujas didn't start with the stentorian tones of Birendra Krishna Bhadra booming
from the radio on Mahalaya, the very first day. Neither did she get to bore the saree salesgirl
at Gariahat's “Kimbadanti” to tears, or hurl mother-sister f-words mentally at the traffic jam
until the taxi-driver's ears bled. No, her Pujas started long, long before that, when she clasped
the cards, embossed in gold-and-crimson, that the Frankfurters had flown in six months ago
all the way from College Street. The sacred concepts of “Past,” “Present,” and the “Future”
that many Indians salute in the Gayatri Mantra have found their true spiritual home in the
German law of Puenktlichkeit/ punctuality. And why not? After all, the Schlegel brothers and
Goethe and other weird German thinkers were some of the first people to open up the
literature and philosophy of ancient India to the Western world. No wonder then that I, too,
have attended to all Termine on my to-do list. I've honoured lunch and coffee dates with non-
Bong friends, bought instant powder for mashed potato from the supermarket--in case
everyone eats too much at the Pujas and doesn’t need a full-blown dinner at home. I'm even
done visiting the dentist so I can talk and sing loud and clear on D-day. Hey, I've even made
it to the rehearsal venue before time, and haven't rung the doorbell yet because there are 47
seconds left. It's disrespectful to be unfashionably early. At the rehearsal there's Tea and Ta
provided by a solicitous volunteer (in some cases, oneself). But you must make sure to gulp
down your Ta somewhere between practice for one musical item and another, unless you
happen to be less than 3 feet tall. Crunch on all the alur chop you like, but don't imagine that
you dare treat yourself to a rainy day's chatty goppo as well. In that half hour of pointless
adda you could've been so much more productive and perfected your jhaptal on the tabla, for
heaven's sake! Sez who you won't need that for next year's programme??

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Freude, Freude

That's right, I'm training my toddler son, not yet 3 years old, into the ethos of
manic productivity. Into Korrektheit. Praezision. Close cousins in meaning to the English
words they look like. Like every socks-and-sandals clad German tourist to Thailand, who's
read up every guidebook on the planet so there are no nasty surprises waiting, I've entertained
my son with Youtube clips of Durga Puja, just so he knows what he's (not) missing out on.
It's important that children learn to be curious, no? Is that something you can't programme?
Sez who? You can programme everything you want. Even the wayward question of which
dal works with the luchi on the day of Mahasasthi. Excel sheets, you Open Source
Dummkopf! Make life easier for yourself, Mensch. Make it so easy that you get to gloriously
spread your Puja celebrations in Frankfurt over 5 chunky days, instead of slathering
everything on to one hapless weekend, like in much of the States. What did the government
give you holidays for? Grab them! Wring them out until you find yourself draping a saree
around the banana called Kala Bou. Just so you know you've earned your work-life balance.

And don't forget they're watching! All the bhog-toting ladies and gentlemen from
the Consulate, for example, keen to spot a winner for the annual celebration of the “Frankfurt
Intercultural Weeks” next year. Equally hawk-eyed are the corporate moguls, whose sweet
talk wangled the stash that made the annual Puja magazine possible, where everyone like
myself discovered that they hadn't abandoned poetry or sketching in the first year of college.
There is no such thing here as chalta hai. Every production is, or at least must be,
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uncompromising. Just like my Siemens washing machine that has one setting for clothes for
“business” and another to be “washed with care.”

A distinction merely logisch. Equally logical is that the eco-friendly protima of the
Devi and her four progeny and their pets could be in line for a national Cross of Honour for
Umweltschutz (environmental protection). You guessed it, the same Ma comes to visit us
every year. Like summer and winter clothes, the Devi is ushered into and out of a permanent
home somewhere nearby. It doesn't matter that the river Main flows almost next to the Puja
venue, lending its name to the city's skyline of bank towers that shadow a bigger and better
place. Hello, “Mainhattan.” Should you wonder at the recycling of Ma Durga? No. Because
this is a country where everyone drinks mineral water from plastic bottles almost as a
religion, and though a few empty bottles find themselves on the grassy banks on the Main,
most land up at the supermarket to be gulped down by a machine—that pays you for your
troubles. And if you're lazy enough to dump your plastic into a normal trash can, be sure that
someone from the homeless community (yes, there is one) will make up for your oversight,
just to be able to live.

Oh yes, we all take care of each other here. Sure, the Pujas here are mainly—for us
women at least--to make other women jealous of our colour co-ordinated, self-crafted
handmade jewellery. Also, to make it clear just how good we're at straitjacketing German
partners/spouses/friends into gold-embroidered finery (every Bengali here secretly admits
that no Indian spouse would put up with the same treatment). But there's more to it than
meets the eye. Those frills are an absolute life-breath for those of us on the fringes of the Puja
community, those without a rock-solid expat pay packet to justify our foreign selves here.
Desperate housewives, desperate doctoral students racing against money and time to hand in
their theses, desperate freelancers signing up for projects that even the Pujas won't allow one
to clock off from. Desperate altruists, whose unbounded thirst the pay packet can't quench.
Desperate for volunteers who can channel money and manpower for schools for the poor in
Jharkhand or the Sunderbans. Desperate retirees, the only ones to be trusted with writing
documents in German, who can sing “Ai Meri Zohra Jabeen” with faith--every coloratura and
every legato preserving the glory of the original. Desperate hobby artists teaching Odissi to
the young 'uns on weekends, jostling for multicultural stage space against Chinese acrobats
and Dominican performers of Merengue with bodies of jelly.

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This time at the Pujas, however, dance isn't just a hobby or a even a passion, but a
language of protest. At one of the cultural programmes, the dancers will swirl around in their
filigreed Anarkali suits to the melodies of playback singer Manna Dey's “Laga chunari mein
daag.” And we're hoping to shake up the audience a little by lecturing that leave alone a
blotch on a chunari, who needs to have a bosom layered by a chunari today anyway? If
anything, it's the stooges of West Bengal’s Didi, Mamata Banerjee, and the goons who
stormed Jadavpur University that fateful night who might need a chunari from the thinking
public, don't they? After all, the university at nearby Marburg, which protested in solidarity
with the “Hokkolorob” movement, isn't that far from Frankfurt--in fact in the same state,
Hessen. Who said that the ever-present Termine of this city have bound the Pujas within
narrow domestic walls? Rather, we've chosen to sing “Ode to Joy,” composed by Schiller, set
to music by Beethoven, and brought to the world by Pete Seeger, together with another city
we well know.

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iDurgotsav

In an earlier piece, I hinted that the cultural programmes performed at our Puja here
in Frankfurt must be put together with a generous dollop of professionalism, because you
never know who's watching you. In this piece, I'm going to completely unsay that. Because
now, midway through the Awfully Big Adventure, it seems clear that the programme
performances every evening have more of the feel of a typical paarar function, where
everybody knows each other and you daren't smirk at the fat Rabindra Nritya dancer on
stage, because you don't know whose mum or wife or daughter she might be. So it's not like
nobody's watching. Everybody is, because they're just glad to have somebody to watch. Not
everyone, doused already in the clockwork rhythms of life in this City, is going to volunteer
his/her time and energy to earn Puja season brickbats or bouquets, as the case may be.

Which means that performance sometimes just means being brave enough to play
to the crowd. Like getting up there and putting on a mime to the classic “Ami Sree Sree
Bhojohori Manna” composed by Manna Dey, lilting in the background, just before the
audience starts licking chops for a scrumptious meal of bhoger khichudi, pulao and jolpai
chutney, veritable manna to the (not only) mach-mishti-loving Bengali. And the same 8-year
olds, who bear the brunt of public announcements from stage bidding them to silence, delight
and astonish the grown-ups by reciting Sukumar Ray's poems of literary nonsense in their
entirety, shaming the doomsayers who never forget to tell us that Bengali culture is well past
its rosy day.

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And because it's not, almost every programme is faithfully preserved for posterity
on YouTube. Internet stardust for family and friends across faraway oceans and landmasses.
Also an indelible record of every blooper you've ever made—be it reciting your part from a
Banani Mukhopadhyay natok or every falsetto in your attempts at recreating a Hemanta
classic.

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Matri, Shakti, Shanti

In my last piece I mentioned that all the cultural programmes at the Frankfurt
Durga Puja here are recorded on video--for all time. But the most classic moments at the
Pujas, I suspect, are the ones that elude the eye of the latest gizmo. Should a good Pujari,
equipped with a conch shell in one hand and an iPhone in the other, capture this astonishing
blend of tradition and modernity in a brazen selfie?

It's in the movie Abohoman, isn't it, where that giant of recent Bangla cinema,
Rituparno Ghosh, brings in one of his neatly cross-stitched dialogues about how delusional it
is to think that one can actually capture a moment on celluloid? Indeed, the idea kept
haunting me as I scribbled out a script for our ambitious cultural programme, led by my
friend Sudeshna--a tribute to Rituparno himself, and the film star Suchitra Sen and also
Manna Dey. There was no recapturing that magic moment when the unassuming, sweaty
Shikha Sarkar in Abohoman morphs into a lip-pouting celluloid goddess, mouthing the
laments of Radha we all know too well from Bhanusingher Padaboli and Hindustani classical
vocals in general. But it did feel as if the moment was created anew as I watched our
excellent dancer, Arpita, for the song “Gahana Kusuma Kunja Majhe” perform. Her slender
fingers sketched sinuous mudras, like merrigolds trembling into blossom. And until now I've

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never heard a dancer insist so much on matching one's facial expression to the mood of the
accompanying music as Sudeshna did. It's a weird moment when friends, with whom one's
just been merrily bitching about the Puja busybodies, suddenly become larger-than-life, “such
stuff/As dreams are made on.”

Little would I have dreamt of these dreams when I bricked up the script from film
reviews on the net, Wikipedia content, and Youtube clips. In the blink of an eye, one saw
Bhanusingher Padaboli in the form of Tagore’s original Bhanusingh Thakurer Padaboli, an
immortal act of literary forgery committed by a sixteen-year old genius in Brajabuli. That
was a language whose modern cousin, Maithili, would have a strangely familiar vibe to many
of the Puja participants along the borders of Bihar and West Bengal. The more I swivelled
into rounds of new acquaintances, the clearer it was that there weren't just textbook Calcuttan
Bengalis running the show, but also a large pan-Indian population from the eastern industrial
belt touching West Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Having spent my younger years in the steel
towns of Durgapur and Jamshedpur, I could tune into the nostalgia of people from Bokaro or
Rourkela for sugar-coated macha sandesh from Purulia and Bankura, saffron-tinged chanar
pulao from Bardhaman or creamy peda from Deoghar. Not for us the Calcuttan rossogolla,
Bhim Nag sandesh or mishti doi. Give us rather the ghee-sodden aroma of puris from pujas to
the tiger-mounted Sherawali Ma incarnation of the Devi. It was as if we all knew each other
from teenage years spent in towns rivalling Chandigarh for straight roads and neat zebra
crossings, religiously planted green hedgerows, the absence of beggars on the streets, and the
abundance of two-wheelers. I suspected that the presence of the Steel Authority of India or its
offshoot industries was not a coincidence, because from what I remembered of the '90s, the
two career options that young people were supposed to opt for in these areas used to be
engineering and medicine. If Indian IT professionals, all the way through Nestlé to Tata
Consultancy, are in demand in the German market today, the aspirational—if blinkered—
culture of those times and places may well have played a role. My inkling was confirmed
when we witnessed a cultural programme mainly in English, featuring kids singing a hymn
called “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace.” “Where there is hatred, let me bring Your love,”
we moaned along, recalling the starched habits of the nuns and monks at a Carmel, a Sacred
Heart, a St. Xavier's or a St. Patrick's Catholic missionary school.

I wonder just how much of those years has really rubbed off though while I envy
the women with their immaculate low-backed blouses enveloped in the glassy folds of a
dhakai saree, lost in prayer in front of the doll-sized Protima. Some, I hear, have brought

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flowers from their own gardens for the morning puja. Me, I can but marvel that women from
English-medium schools in my own generation can ululate with such ease. Maybe it's just
me—I was brought up in a leftist family where pujas and day-long fasts for wives largely
meant things that other people did, certainly not us. But it's the men's silk and embroidery
that really dazzles me, guess it's been ages since I've tuned in to the shehnai strains at a
biyebaari. As I ruminate on the reach of Sharbari Datta's fashion revolution that made men's
sherwanis ultra-watchable, I'm struck by unholy terror at the thought of packing my diapers-
clad toddler son into a dhoti gifted by my enthusiastic family. At least he won't whine at the
itchiness, the below-20 degrees temperatures happily allow for the finery of the Calcuttan
winter.

But at the Puja here, it's a time to try on new clothes—and selves too. The dhak
playing nearly all day here may be stuck together with duct tape, instead of the feather-and-
canvas trussed drums at Calcutta pandals, but the players here are the polar opposite of those
dilapidated men, whose hands have never known the joy of a speck of cream. Coming from
the consulate, Lufthansa, or global consultancies, the dhakis here are busy at play, and we,
the audience, love to play along.

There are times when the game gets too serious, however. By the end of the
morning Puja I'm feeling such a trespasser, I can hardly bring myself to strew anjali, bow my
head to the spray of shantijal, or accept the tika of puja sindoor on my forehead. It's been a
lot to reprogramme within a bare few days.

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Countdown: Sindoor-Khela

The duct tape on the Puja dhak seems to be holding up well, from the day of
Ashtami onwards the rhythms have been getting more and more manic, and there's just so
long you can stay in the otherwise nondescript main hall where the Puja is taking place. The
crowds are surging in, not just from Frankfurt—with the addition of Navratri celebrants—but
also from the nearby cities and towns of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Mainz, Kaiserslautern,
Giessen, even Stuttgart. And those of us rushing out at intervals for a smoke or just the quiet
of the deserted playground nearby are wondering at how we ever had the spirits to go pandal-
hopping through the nights into the dawn in Calcutta. And guiltily grateful that we do the
rounds on WhatsApp now. It must be age, we comfort ourselves.

To be honest, seeing the slew of cultural programmes, I'm not sure that I'm at a
Bengali Association set-up any more. Usually when I think Bangali paraar function the
picture I’ve got in my head is of someone singing on a stage with a harmonium, accompanied
by a tabla. Or else, Rabindra Nrityanatya dancers piled thick with garlands and flower
bracelets, the male characters all played by teenage girls. Or the sacred aabritti, where a well-
dressed performer gesticulates wildly, reciting soulful lines of poetry, raising ohs and ahs
from some, and secret sniggers from many. Indeed, some of the programmes at the Puja here
really are like that, and pretty awesome for that matter. Deserving mention are the
Mangalacharan on the evening of Shashthi, performed by published poets with a real feel for
the sonority of Sanskrit words. There's also a thoughtful programme coupling the character of
Draupadi from The Mahabharata with the overarching theme of female Shakti. But more
often than not, what really holds the audience is what our parents—grandparents?--would've
brushed off as “Hindi cinema'r gaan,” indeed, “apasanskriti” or “degenerate culture,” the bête
noire of the former Left Front state government. Here on stage is a spectacular Manipuri
dance, and two figures of willowy grace make a toy of the bamboo-framed blow-up skirt.

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When the music slowly and surely sails into the folksy lilts of the Bollywood number
“Sasural Genda Phool,” the audience goes wild. I can't be done clapping at the boldness of
the synthesis, even as I realise how hopelessly out-of-touch I am with recent desi pop culture.
Later in the evening, there's a dance to “Nagada sang dhol baaje.” This must be the nth song
on the planet featuring the phrase “dhol baaje,” so it must be Bollywood. The audience is
hooting, mesmerised at the acid brilliance of a tall young woman in a swirl of skirts. She's a
veritable cyclone of mauve and silver, and my son, scared to death, runs to the comforting
shade of Papa-Mama.

I guess I've been feeling a bit more at ease around here, ever since having queued
up for a tika of ashes after the Navami yagna. As the priest read the mantra, I closed my eyes
and felt at peace. Strangely, the ceremony felt a bit like the Eucharist at the abundance of
Catholic masses I've attended in recent times with my in-laws. Somehow I've always
managed to skip out of church before the obligatory wafer. The sip of wine was never a
question—reared in a culture of chuachut, who wanted to drink from a goblet that fifty
people had touched with their lips already? The good thing about Hinduism is, as an older
German friend—married to a Bengali spouse—observed, “You can do as much as you want.
Or as little. Even be an agnostic if you choose.” Boli, boli, shouts someone. I rush over, pretty
sure there wasn't an Alpine billy goat being led officiously to the stake. Instead there's a
pumpkin, brightly painted with a sindoor swastika that cannot—will not—be confused with
the embarrassing symbol of Nazi times. The gathered crowd has stilled its breath as the
principal actors with gamcha bandannas hold their chopping knives aloft. The knives slice the
air, and I'm not the only onlooker happy to miss pitiful bleats and fountain sprays of crimson.

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On the day of Dashami, the Pujaris must put up with another leap of faith at the
Baran ceremony. It's alright to pray for husbands, but the priest makes it clear that the
Protima of the goddess shouldn't be treated to corporeal mishti or play out-of-season Holi
with sindoor. The Devi needs to be in shape for next year's Puja. So instead, it's us, the
people, who play havoc. Some of the bronze plates boast kalakand, pantua and laddoos from
the Bangladeshi, Punjabi and Afghani shops at the nearby Bahnhofsviertel. Other plates are
piled with local Raffaello chocolates with a grated coconut topping, and crunchy Ferrero
Rocher balls with the familiar gilt wrapping.

In an hour we'll be downing the sweets and chocolates as glucose shots inside the
women's green room, as we pin up sarees or slip into anarkali suits for our cultural
programme. Endlich, as the locals would say. I'm supposed to be anchoring the song and
dance performances, and am all a-jitter at the very thought that I might tumble onto the wires
of my headset, trailing on the floor of the stage. Or the folds of my fancy Kanjivaram, for that
matter.

But for the moment, the Pujas are officially over and there's a feel of release in the
air. A quick lunge towards the legs of people who look obviously older than oneself, for a
Bijoya pronam, is not an issue. But what about people of the opposite sex one isn't pally
enough for a golagoli with? Namashkar to a person you say the informal “tumi” to doesn't
quite work. Well, I see that our generation has found a decent solution in a handshake that

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accompanies the greeting of “Shubho Bijoya.” It's a bit like the overjoyed “Peace be with
you” after a Mass at the church, but I like it, it says that times have moved on.

Everyone—men, women, children—has at least a forehead streaked with vermilion

now. In the green room, all I have to do is wash off the extra bits and apply blusher to even
out the shades before I walk out on stage. At my age I can't pretend to rosy apple cheeks, can
I?

“Shubho Bijoya, meine Damen und Herren/ ladies and gentlemen.”

September 2014

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