This piece is being composed on the morning of Dashami when the sky is blue in Kolkata, the air fragrant, and the 10-armed goddess and her four children are set to return to their abode, after having graced the city — every nook and cranny of it — for a period of four days that is known as Durga Puja. Now will begin the wait, for next year’s Durga Puja.
In fact, Durga Puja is not so much about the festivities, which end only too quickly, as about the wait. It is a round-the-year countdown.
