Sniffin' out a dash of Bengal in Bengaluru

Whoever said that the ride had to be one that would take a country road or a distant highway? Whoever said it was wrong.

Sure city riding makes it more painful. The perspective of adventure changes. Of finding short cuts to avoid traffic, of trying to weave in and out of it, of finding that pavement to cut through a long jam, of planning a destination within a given time to eat that favorite food... add to all of this what if one were to also go search and look for festivities? A tiring but different adventure of sorts.

It took us two days... or this weekend so to speak. The occasion was Durga Puja. And for the two of us (that's me and my wife) an occasion when we really miss being in our place of birth Kolkata, the friends, the lights, the festive spirit around us. This is the time of the year when the smell of the city and its emotional appeal goes up by more than a few notches!

This year we were in Bangalore (newly named Bengaluru) and as I put it, twas about the Bengal in the uru (uru means town in some of the south Indian languages.) Strange name, for a city of Bengal in the south?

Anyway, this year, we wanted to find out whether this city celebrates Puja at all! As we'd observed in our earlier years we'd never come across any major fanfare on this occasion... So it was about finding out and nailing it.

That thought in mind we went for it. The whole task had to approached a bit methodically, as it was not a easy task, as in Kolkata, Pandal hopping was a cake walk in our younger days. We actually used to have competitions for the number of pandals and deities seen during the four day Puja...there would be many in every "paraa" one just had to make a route map and run for it everyday.

Here, one had to become a retriever and actually sniff around for that Dash of Bengal. The web searched, Bengali friends asked, references taken...

We'd lined up an impressive list of 10 puja's with addresses that seemed finite. And that was imminently doable in a day or two at best.

The next post is about the two days of the ride, the sights and an impression of what we could make out as the Bangalore definition of the puja. To get the angles read on.