Immigrant Bengalis

Cultural Programs with Durga Puja: A Bi-Coastal Perspective

Amitabha Bagchi

When I was growing up in Calcutta in the 1950’s, I learnt as a child that Durga Puja in many localities was followed by a cultural program. The cultural program used to be one of two kinds: a musical evening known in Bengali as Jalsa; or an amateur or semi-professional theatrical performance involving members of the local community. These programs were held on makeshift stages, with or without backdrop and wings. In its stripped-down form and in largely suburban and rural areas, dramas were performed on open-air stages -- amphitheater-like -- and were known as Jatras.

During my days as a student in the United States, which spanned the latter half of the 1960s, there were not enough Bengalis anywhere in this country to organize a Durga Puja. The situation changed dramatically following the passage (in 1969) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. There was a tidal influx of Bengali (and other Indian) professionals as US immigrants in the period from 1969 to 1971. They were followed by their families soon thereafter, and this quickly created a critical mass of immigrants to recreate events and festivities of their native land. The time was now ripe to hold community (or Sarbojonin) Durga Pujas.

The first Durga Puja I remember attending was in the fall of 1970 in Chicago. I drove from Urbana, Illinois to the puja venue with some friends. The arrangement was simple and basic, but I found it strongly evocative emotionally. There was no plan for a cultural event, although I am certain there were Bijoya gatherings in people’s homes where harmoniums were brought out and the talented (as well as the courageous and the intrepid) belted out Tagore and modern Bengali (Adhunik) songs.

For the next decade and a half, as the immigrant Bengali community settled down and grew more prosperous, local Durga Pujas began to grow in number. But they were not paired with cultural programs. To begin with, Durga Pujas in the 1970s were by and large one-day affairs. That did not leave enough time for a cultural show after a lengthy (albeit abbreviated) religious ritual with bhog and community dinner. By this time, cultural events, mainly theatrical performances, were indeed being held; but they were separate from religious observances.

Coming to New Jersey in 1984 after spending four years in Rochester, NY, I encountered something akin to a phase transition. Rochester was too small to organize a Durga Puja on its own. Instead, the Bengalis living there traveled some 170 miles to observe the puja in Toronto, Canada. In contrast, I learnt that North Jersey held not one but two Durga Pujas. They were held over two or three days, and the venues were spacious enough to accommodate cultural functions.

The New Jersey Durga Puja (NJDP) of Kallol was held across two spacious classrooms in the College Street campus of Rutgers University. The Durga Puja of Garden State Puja Committee (GSPC) was held at the Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Jersey City. For Kallol at Rutgers University, one classroom was used for the puja ceremony, while the other (with the dais as stage) was used for cultural functions. For GSPC, the high school had ample space to arrange separately the puja observance and cultural festivities. It now became possible to replicate the back-home experience of associating cultural programs with Durga Puja, and in fact go one step further by having both done in tandem on the same premises. This one-upped the Indian custom of the cultural program following the religious ceremony by a week or two.

Theater, it must be said, is closest to the Bengali heart after Rabindra Sangeet. When I lived in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC in the latter half of the 1970s, the local Bengali club, Sanskriti, staged theatrical performances at least once a year. But the performances were not connected with their Durga Puja. Things in New Jersey were quite different. An early experience of mine at a GSPC Durga Puja was of some actors using plywood, saw and hinges to fashion some doors for use as props for the drama later that evening. Kallol went one step further by having theater groups with celebrity names (Biswajit, Dhananjay Bairagi [aka Tarun Roy]) come from Bombay and Calcutta in successive years for after-puja performances at the East Brunswick High School.

Things evolved further through the 1990s. The Kallol club was initially set up to do dramas, and some passionate theater-lovers among the membership took the initiative to go back to those roots. They chose to enact serious dramas – like re-creating successful musicals and family dramas from the Calcutta stage – as part of cultural programs with the Durga Puja. Kallol, furthermore, had a long tradition of setting up dramas with children, which were typically musical and involved songs and dances. By this time, the club had become more stable financially, and so baby steps were taken to bring decent singers from out of state and even India.

The cultural program associated with Kallol’s Durga Puja continued evolving through the first decades of the new millennium. It now had to cater to two large and distinct groups. On the one hand were the aging founder members and their friends and cohorts. They loved and clamored for Hindustani classical music to be on offer. On the other side were the younger IT professionals, who had started coming to the country around Y2K and later changed their status from temporary visa holders to permanent residents. Their musical taste moved away from the sedate Rabindra Sangeet to noisy Bollywood songs and disco dancing. To accommodate both interests. Kallol developed this template for Durga Puja’s cultural program: Friday for classical night; Sunday for children’s drama; and the drama by local adults and musical program by a top-notch singer or band from India alternating between Saturday and Sunday.

I left New Jersey for Southern California over three years ago. The first Durga Puja I attended, in 2021, was one organized by my neighborhood Bengali club, Dakshini. It too spanned three days (Friday to Sunday) similar to Kallol’s. Imagine my surprise, however, when I found out that there would be no dramas – either by children or adults – as part of the puja’s cultural program! Have the Bengalis changed that much between America’s two coasts? What happened to their abiding fascination with theater?

The big event touted in the cultural sphere was Saturday’s performance by the Bollywood playback singer, Benny Dayal. My septuagenarian immigrant self was blissfully unaware of the artiste’s existence, although I had heard (and appreciated) his famous hit song, “Badtameez Dil, Badtameez Dil …” The undercard, if you will, on Friday was to be a performance of Bengali songs (with Hindi interludes) by some young talents from Kolkata. No cultural function was scheduled for Sunday. All this seemed surpassing strange to me.

With time and exposure, the alternate arrangement on the West Coast came into focus. The activities on Sunday primarily are Nabami Puja, Bisarjan, and Sindoor Khela.  The day ends with boxed dinners distributed to the attendees. No cultural event is organized that day, presumably because of the time and distance the puja participants would have to travel to get back home and be ready for Monday’s regular routine. The same problem exists in New Jersey, of course, except that the geographical area from which the puja crowd is drawn is larger for Southern California.

This is not to say that all is lost – that the Bengali character has been altered forever by the California sunshine. I was wrong to worry initially about the puzzling absence of dramas during Durga Puja here in LA. The Bengali attachment to dramas has to be catered to, in some way. Sure enough, and it took me a while to realize it, all local programs, including theaters (both children’s and adults’) and instrumental music (often by a guru and his students) are moved (shunted?) to the Laxmi Puja. This means that the Laxmi Pujas in Los Angeles are more elaborate affairs than in New Jersey. But the basic elements of the cultural program with Durga Puja remain the same on both the East and West Coasts. They are just arranged differently

In conclusion, I admit that I cannot really talk about Durga Pujas in all parts of the West Coast. I can only say for sure that the template for the cultural program in the Los Angeles area is different from Kallol’s. And the one thing missing with Durga Puja in Los Angeles is Hindustani classical music by a celebrity musician from India. That is one aspect of Kallol’s Durga Puja that I truly miss.

 

(Posted January 7, 2025)

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