Professor who hosts 340-year-old Durga Puja in Kolkata calls festival a ‘fight against patriarchy’

Dr. Suriti Ray honors her mother’s legacy by fighting patriarchy through a centuries-old Durga Puja tradition in Kolkata

Suriti Ray lost her father when she was only two — he was 24 — and she doesn’t hesitate, saying that if she had lost her mother instead of the father at that age, her life would have been very different from what it turned out, patriarchy being so firmly rooted in families.

Her mother, Kamala, was a strong woman. Living the life of a widow, she got herself educated: first at Loreto College and then at Government Arts College. But she wasn’t allowed to work, and while she cooked non-vegetarian dishes for the family, she could herself eat only vegetarian. Her ambition in life was to make sure her daughter didn’t fall victim to patriarchy, and she succeeded.

“It is paradoxical that we worship the goddess while subjecting women to all kinds of torture. But my mother was a powerful woman. To me she was a reflection of Mother Durga; to me Durga Puja is a fight against patriarchy,” Dr. Ray, 62, who is the head of the department of political science at Lady Brabourne College, said. Dr. Ray plays host to a Durga Puja that is nearly 340 years old — one of the oldest, if not the oldest, in the city.

The heritage house she lives in — Hara Kutir — is 271 years old, and this building had replaced a mud house that stood there for nearly 60 years, when the place — a part of Sutanuti village in today’s north Kolkata — was mostly a jungle with a pond and a cremation ground nearby. In the courtyard of this old building that looks and feels its age, the Durga idol is getting finishing touches. The idol looks the same as it has over the centuries, and the artisan’s ancestors too have been associated with the family.

“I believe that people who have nobody to lean upon, they have the goddess by their side. There are times when I feel disillusioned, when I want to give up, then I tell myself, ‘I should fight’. That strength comes from Maa Durga. I feel blessed that we are carrying forward the family tradition,” Dr. Ray, who spent her entire life in this house, said. Her husband, Dr. Ashok Ray, a scientist who retired as a deputy director at CSIR, was mostly posted out of Kolkata.

Today the couple organises the family puja along with their son, Archisman Ray Banerjee. The preparations traditionally begin a day after Janmashtami, when rituals for idol-making take place.

“We hold the puja on all 10 days [usually Durga Puja begins on the sixth of the 10 auspicious days that end with Dussehra], special meals are cooked for the goddess and her children on all 10 days; what is also different about our puja is that Lakshmi and Saraswati don’t have their vehicles [owl and swan], and Durga’s lion is more of a horse,” Mr. Ray Banerjee, a PhD student at IIT Kharagpur, said.

His mother completed her PhD — on women’s empowerment — in 2015, at the age of 53, after a battle with a serious heart condition. She was able to show her degree to her mother, who was bedridden at the time and who died the following year. “My mother used to always tell me, ‘You must work; you must earn your living; you cannot rely on anyone’,” Dr. Ray said.

The mood of their puja will be somewhat restrained this year because of the public outcry over the R.G. Kar Hospital incident; “but our puja is mainly about maintaining the rituals and that we shall,” her son Archisman said.

Published - September 20, 2024 06:59 pm IST