The Mookherjee Clan Celebrates Durga Puja at Kuldiha

As I sat at the coffee outlet in Park Street, I took some time to think about the surroundings where I would be savoring my next evening’s coffee. Kuldiha…. Kuldiha is my maternal granddad’s native village. Though, I feel when all villages are written about, they’d sound verisimilar, Kuldiha is a cut above the rest. The only time I can wrangle out a visit to this idyllic village, is during the Pujas; that too every 6th year. 

Actually, my late maternal granddad was the sixth sibling. It was incumbent upon the Mookherjee clan (that’s us) to celebrate the Puja in turns. Hence visiting Kuldiha after a hiatus of six years can be quite a treat. Next morning, on Panchmi, at six in the morning, a crowd of my relatives boarded the Black Diamond Express. I was lost in my own reverie, children around ten making up the majority of the juvenile percentage. I wondered how much of the village had changed. After all six years is long enough for a skyscraper to be built! 

After an uneventful journey interrupted by a breakfast of luchi and aloor-dum, we reached Durgapur. From here, the journey has to be covered by car, as the village lay a few miles from its nearest town, Muchipara( literally meaning “colony of the cobblers”). We boarded the white rattle-trap of an Ambassador placed at our service, so kindly by Anil Dadu, one of my granddads staying at Kuldiha. We rushed through the roads of Durgapur and finally reached the smaller, more narrow roads hallmarking Muchipara. The shops lining the streets here were a far cry from the well lighted stores I had seen the evening before on Park street. Concrete buildings now gave way to lush paddy fields where feathery Kaash jostled for space with Shiuli trees. A large lake told us we were to reach Kuldiha soon.