Labour's Love's Lost MORE regular than the cuckoo in

spring end the green-fly in summer is the cry in Calcutta at this time of year for a Puja bonus. W i t h less than a fortnight left be­fore the ten-armed goddess actually arrives, thus causing a most wel­come four-day break in the unspeak­able monotony of Bengali life, the demand for a bonus has been get­t ing more strident wi th the passage of every day. The shops are ful l , more wi th stocks than wi th buyers, for the latter are mostly on the streets or the maidan, raising slog­ans or making speeches declaiming the utter ruthlessness of the emp­loyers as a class. The police have to watch from a slow-moving wire­less van, ten processions a day on the average. On Saturday the num­ber rose to thi r ty . There are employ­ers who have refused to pay any­thing, and in their offices and works there is go-slow. Those who have agreed to pay fifteen days' basic wages by way of bonus are faced w i t h the demand for a month's and those who promised a month's are confronted w i t h the demand for two months' and so on. It should be mentioned in passing that Indian owned business houses have more trouble than those owned by foreign­ers, because the latter run their shows more efficiently and are in consequence able to pay their staff better.

So the goddess Durga w i l l have to wait a while before the Bengali is ready to hail her. At this present he is busy demanding a bonus, and he needs it very badly too. This is the time when he must buy new clothes for his children, of whom the more makes him the sorrier. And that eleventh child needs a pair of slippers too. The wife has not had a sari since last Puja, Then that outstanding bill wi th the grocer; he has refused further credit and Insists on immediate settlement of the previous bi l l . The sky is beauti­ful wi th light-coloured autumn clouds, and there is an undefinable something in the air. All this, how-ever, is powerless against the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker. The florist must wait ; read, rather, the advertisement of the Calcutta Flour Mills Association,

which promises atta at 6 as and 6 pies a seer.

* * * Even as the most poignant part

of The Way of All Flesh is that which shows the old man standing outside the window in snow through which he sees his family enjoying itself at the Christmas party, it is at this time of Durga Puja that the sadness of Bengali middle-class exis­tence today is seen in its barest ugliness. Nature and children con­spire to make the unhappy un-happier. The rains are over, or w i l l be in a few days. The clear sky is an invitation to joy, one the Bengali middle-class householder is no longer able to attend for he has not the wherewithal. The relative coolness of the air brings no joy. There are the children wi th their demands for toys or clothes or contributions to the local community Puja fund, l i t t le knowing that the poor man has not the money needed for all these things. The shehnal wails on in the Puja pandal close by, and the sad­ness of the tune chosen reflects more the sorrow of the moneyless father than that of Durga having to go back to Kailas after four days wi th her people in the plains.

This evocation of the pre-Puja pathos of the Bengali Hindu may well seem sentimental. The answer is that sentiment is an essential in ­gredient of the mental make-up of every middle class, which would be less than itself without i t . There are many things the Bengali bhadm-log goes without all through the year. He may sigh or he may not, Puja is a different proposition al­together. Not to be able to wear a new dhoti, not to be able to give one's wife a new sari on the occa­sion, not to be able to clothe one's children in colourful garments for those four days- these are tragedies In the fullest sense of the term.

* * *

Religion has nothing, or very litt le, to do wi th it a l l . As Nirad Chaudhuri wrote in his autobio­graphy, it would require the in­genuity, learning and patience of a Frazer or a Dumezil to unra­vel a l l the things that have gone on for centuries to make Durga

Puja what it is today in Bengali life. Those who participated in it in their childhood and what Bengali did not? can never forget what these four days once meant to them. Especially true is it of those who spent their boyhood in a Bengal village or .small town. There was nothing to match this festival. For three days Durga brought Bengalis to life, and on the fourth day she departed. And on that day everybody would em­brace everybody else, forget all differences and be one. It is In those four days that Bengalis looked like being a people with a common way of life. The priest was a brahmin, but the drummer an untouchable and the man wi th the shchnai was almost always a Moslem. This alone should make it obvious that the religious ele­ment in Durga Puja may not be the most important.

The economies of Durga Puja are as important. This is the buy­ing season. The image makers brought to their labours something more than mere skil l , and the drummer did not play only for money. There was not an aspect of Bengali life which was left un­touched by the Puja. It was the time for family reunion, for the old tic wi th the village to be re­vived It is not for nothing that, as nationalism permeated Bengali life it became a part of the Puja too. When the young enthusiasts shouted "Victory to Durga Mother," and followed it wi th a shout for Gandhi or Subhas Bose, it seemed nothing incongruous. In the famous song Vande Mataram by Bankim Chatterji, you never know, at a given moment whether he is speaking of Mother Durga or Mother India. Durga represent­ed everything that the Bengali valued.

* * *

There in no reason why employ­ers must pay a Puja bonus. Indeed, somebody recently called it a relic of a bygone age, when labour had low wages and no rights and when the boss sought to seem generous once a year by giving a bakhshish. It reminded him of the continuing feudal

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THE ECONOMIC WEEKLY September 21, 1957

A Calcutta Diary