Saraswati Pooja and Vijaya Dasami Holidays-Time to rejoice

Its holiday and Pooja time back home with a series of holidays and schools, colleges and offices are having a gala time though the intensity of the celeberations have gone down. Just thought of recapping my experiences of this Pooja season.

During school days the week preceding Saraswati Pooja was beehive of activity with small individual contributions for the Pooja and pori kadalai with little bit of jaggery was all we used to carry home after a common Pooja in the central hall. But it was exciting to know that there would be no studies the next day and all the books whether used or not were carefully decorated with sandal/ kunkum and confined to the laps of the Goddess for 24 hours or so. But only problem was some parents used to ensure that even stuff like Radio , cycle, mopeds etc were all part of the Pooja and that would mean not touching them till the next day Pooja. To bring them back to action another puja was performed on Dashami day and after formal 30 minute lip service of touching all the books under the pretext of reading they were happily confined to those wooden shelves. For me not having to read was the only attraction of the Saraswati Pooja since there were no TV channels and cinema programmes for the day those days and going to movies was also banned since it would have spoiled the sanctity of the pooja mood and upset Goddess Saraswati and we were threatened that we would never ever get good marks again.

However once I started work and became part of the entertainment club of Best and Crompton the last week before Pooja was no work and complete 'OB' as they call it under the pretext of Pooja preparations. All the monthly contributions net of Pooja expenses used to be converted into some Tiffin boxes or large stainless steel vessels with some well to do factories giving away larger 'andas and gundas' along with of course the inevitable pori kadalai. The late wonderful 'Sunda' of the famous SV Sekhar drama troupe was the default Poojari cum Sastrigal. When I moved to Crompton Greaves the whole office used to come to standstill on the day before the holidays with the petty cashier closing his cabin with a huge smile on his face hours much ahead of the Pooja since he was supposed to decorate the cash box and the President of the unit used to open up the petty cash book and write 'labham' on the first page like a typical' Sate kadai' being a North Indian Company. But the best part was the large pumpkins thrown to the entrance after the Pooja by the shops all over the place in the night after cleaning up their premises and invariably some vehicles were victims of the slippery surface next day thanks to those pumpkins.

Once into Gulf everything became history since there were no holidays and the only way you came to know that the Pooja was on back home was by seeing special programme announcements of Sun and Jaya full of cinema related stuff with just a caption of a Saraswati photo shown as a curtain raiser.. Some times on these days we really regret missing all that fun but as usual life is quickly back to monotonous routine the next day and we carry on!

RK