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DurgaPuja 2020

To the left, right near the door, is a wooden bench and table, some paper plates with half-eaten
pizzas and overturned soda cans, and these are the first-generations, teenagers and soon-to-be-
teens, some as bored as I am, looking at their phone, some sitting grumpily, and I know their parents
have revoked their phone privileges. In the whole crowd, these are the ones I feel the most kinship
to, none of us quite fitting in but still there, like Mahisasura in the Ma Durga posse.
And then at the center are clumps of chairs, and there in small connected graphs, are people my age,
men in one clump, women in another, and children running in between them, shouting noisily,
stepping over saris and dhotis, and I am wondering what to do, when I hear a voice calling out my
name.
I can’t believe it. I know someone here too.
I turn around. And a familiar face is smiling at me, his arm raised hailing me like I am a cab. I say
familiar, because we went to engineering school and we would play carrom in the union room, and
we went together to see a soft-core Zalman King porn film at Bhavani once, and I know it sounds
strange saying it now but then it seemed the coolest thing to do, but I never really knew knew him. I
am seeing him after ten years, and he has changed, and I am not just talking about the extra kilos he
has packed on, the soft man-boobs, the insistent image of the nipple straining against his tight-kurta,
and flour-like rings of fat around his waist.
It’s his eyes.
They seem dead. Like a decapitated goat, on the butcher’s chopping board. As I approach, a polite
smile on my face, a boy of about eight walks up to him, and kicks him on the side of his thigh, and he
does not seem to care, does not even look at him, and then the boy holds him by the neck and starts
shaking it, and yelling about something, and he still does not react.
I know it then.
Fatherhood.
I pull up a chair and sit next to him. He is in a group of about seven, and he introduces them to me
one after another, mid-career professionals, almost identical kurtas, generic names, and DSLR camera
hanging around their necks. They were all “doing software”. One hands me a card which said
“Archisman Ganguly Photography” and added “my hobby”, lest I think he did this for a living (yes he
is “in software” too). After the round of introductions are over, and I have forgotten all their names
already, me and my once-friend exchange some status updates, what we have been doing over the
past ten years, only to be disturbed once as he gets up and breaks up a fight between his son and his
daughter, and then comes back, and sighs.
As my friend runs about, I sit with a moronic grin on my face, pretending to participating in the
conversations about me.
I write more code than you. My DSLR has better specifications than yours. My daughter won a county
scholarship. My son can recite the alphabet and he is only ten months. I refinanced my house at a
better rate. My Honda is better than your Toyota.
I like them to all stand up, and fish out their dicks, and make it into what it is, a Neanderthal “my cock
is longer than your” competition, but since we are Bengali men, we don’t do this, because we know
we will all lose.
At some time the group gets up, and we all make our way to the side room where lunch is served. A
long row of ladies (pronounced “leddies”) stand there, doling out food, proportional to their
familiarity with the person holding the plate in front. My friend, who is the general secretary of the
Bangali association, gets generous portions, while I get scraps of broken vegetables, half a spoonful of
rice, and chicken, that has had the meat molten off it. The chaatni they somehow allow people to
take by themselves, and I scoop two large portions on my paper plate, as a gesture of protest, only to
find that it tastes like someone put sugar in salsa.

Central Ohio Bengali Cultural Association