The All Bengali Crime Detectives

by Suparna Chatterjee

'Moshai, I have always wondered,' said Bibhuti Bose, 'how come of all the gods and goddesses in India, it is Ma Durga that we worship with such devotion in Bengal? I mean Lord Rama was from the North, and he went to Lanka from the South, crossing the Indian Ocean. Where does Bengal come into the picture?' 'Bibhuti babu, you have raised an interesting point,' said Debdas Guha Roy. 'Durga Pujo in Bengal has nothing much, or very little, to do with Lord Rama. You see, agriculture and farming have always been the main occupations of rural Bengal. And in the olden days it was the womenfolk who used to take care of much of the farming. Their position in society was higher than that of men. Hence one sees a predominance of goddesses rather than gods in Bengal – Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati. . . . 'Now the main enemy of the farmers in those days was the wild buffalo. Hence an idol was created depicting a female goddess capturing and taming a wild buffalo. She was called Mahishmordini, killer of buffalo. Later when society became dominated by men, the buffalo was replaced by a half-man and half-bull image, depicting the thwarting of both by a woman.' 'Debdas babu, are you saying that all the mythological stories we have heard since childhood are false?' 'Moshai, a mythological story is just that . . . a story. When one goes into the history of how certain cultures and traditions came into being, one can understand many of the practices. If you go to the Indian Museum you will see an o...