Even deaths in the family have never stopped the Kundu family’s Durga Puja celebrations; this year they saw the deaths of their two seniormost members, and yet idols are being made for the autumn festival to be held at their home in the town of Gobardanga, just 30 km from the India-Bangladesh order.
“Two of my grandfather’s younger brothers died recently — one in February and another just last month. So, the 2022 puja turned out to be the last for one generation of the family and the first for another, because my daughter had just been born at the time. Such is life, you see, one ending is another beginning,” says Manas Kundu, 32, a trained physiotherapist who lives in Kolkata but visits Gobardanga, about 60 km from the city, every weekend.
Gobardanga is not where the family always lived. They originally belong to Batikamari village in Faridpur district in present-day Bangladesh, a place they didn’t leave even during Partition of India in 1947. They were a well-to-do family, which celebrated its own Durga Puja, a tradition handed down through generations. But soon after Partition, the atmosphere began to get hostile and the young men in the landowning family thought it might be safer to move to India.
