There are some days which transports you to the past like a memory fly past with such clarity that you wonder whether it is really past or present. There is once such day , ie 17th Sept.
For some obscure reason not fully understood to me , this day is the fixed day for Vishwakarma Puja in Bengal. Although all the Hindu Gods and Godesses always follow Hindu almanac, this particular God of engineering keeps his appointment day with the mortals fixed on 17th Sept, irrespective of anything else. I have not understood this fixation with the Gregarian calendar, inspite of the dhak and the bhog and the dadhikarma and all else Bong !
Having grown up in an industrial town Durgapur, some 160 odd kilometres from Calcutta, now Kolkata, this day was a special day during my childhood. This was the day we got to see festivities all around, and multiple invitations used to come for my dad and we used to go in tow. This was the day we got to go inside the coke oven/power plant premises and gape in wonder at things which actually were far beyond the childhood brain to comprehend. I recall this day as the day when the evening invite was fixed at one such electrical substation where my father had been attached to for some time , and the folks there never missed to give him an invite till the last year of his employment. We children uses to frolic around in the otherwise sombre substation premises, of course under the watchful eyes of the elders , lest we touch or go near something dangerous.
Many many years later , having graduated in electrical engineering and then taking up a career in that stream, these equipment are part and parcel of my daily life, but these memories stay etched in my brain as the fragrance of a flower long withered but still lingers in freshness. Now out of Bengal for many years , I try to my best to explain to my daughter the sights and the sounds long gone by. The memory stays afresh while the clock ticks and the years go by, the bad taste in the mouth remains when we hear that most of the industries in that town are past their prime, fallen prey to abject trade unionism and misled ideologies which have not withstood the test of time.
For some obscure reason not fully understood to me , this day is the fixed day for Vishwakarma Puja in Bengal. Although all the Hindu Gods and Godesses always follow Hindu almanac, this particular God of engineering keeps his appointment day with the mortals fixed on 17th Sept, irrespective of anything else. I have not understood this fixation with the Gregarian calendar, inspite of the dhak and the bhog and the dadhikarma and all else Bong !
Having grown up in an industrial town Durgapur, some 160 odd kilometres from Calcutta, now Kolkata, this day was a special day during my childhood. This was the day we got to see festivities all around, and multiple invitations used to come for my dad and we used to go in tow. This was the day we got to go inside the coke oven/power plant premises and gape in wonder at things which actually were far beyond the childhood brain to comprehend. I recall this day as the day when the evening invite was fixed at one such electrical substation where my father had been attached to for some time , and the folks there never missed to give him an invite till the last year of his employment. We children uses to frolic around in the otherwise sombre substation premises, of course under the watchful eyes of the elders , lest we touch or go near something dangerous.
Many many years later , having graduated in electrical engineering and then taking up a career in that stream, these equipment are part and parcel of my daily life, but these memories stay etched in my brain as the fragrance of a flower long withered but still lingers in freshness. Now out of Bengal for many years , I try to my best to explain to my daughter the sights and the sounds long gone by. The memory stays afresh while the clock ticks and the years go by, the bad taste in the mouth remains when we hear that most of the industries in that town are past their prime, fallen prey to abject trade unionism and misled ideologies which have not withstood the test of time.
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