Durga Puja & Google search - a contrarian view

Durga Puja is a huge business in the Eastern part of India. Hundreds of millions of rupees are spent in these 5 days of festivity. Obviously people have also been spending on the Digital media fronts increasingly over the last few years. But is it resulting in desired Return of Investment? 

That's a difficult question. But we have an easy answer: It seems much lesser people have searched for "Durga Puja" in 2011 & 2012 compared to 2009 & 2010. In fact in 2011, the search volume came down to 40% of the previous year. There was a marginal increase in 2012 though. 

If you notice, the upward trend got down in 2008 also. Possibly it was a dull year due to the recession. But what happened to the Googlers in 2011 & 2012? Will 2013 see a revival of Google search volume due to increased social media and related searches or will it continue to be down due to the bad economic condition of the country? 

Keep guessing till the Puja gets over.

Season of Bengali Literature - Puja Barshiki

Durga Puja is that awesome period of the year, when a bong gets all its creative energy in full force, be it in creating beautiful idols of Durga, or the superb pandals, or the volume of literature that gets churned out. 

I started getting my staple of Puja barshiki from my early childhood via Anandamela. It used to have nice illustrations (that used to attract the eyes before checking the author list) and the fantastic stories of Kakababu and so on. It was a ritual to try to copy the front cover drawing of Durga from Anandamela. Over the years, one of my realization regarding literature - children remember the name of the story, while adults remember the name of the author.

We used to get almost all the Puja specials at our home - my father and jethus and kakus used to consult with each other before buying, so that there was no duplicate copy of a Desh. Being a joint family, we used to get access to all these books without going to any library. You may envy to know that we used to have atleast 10 (or more) of them starting from Anandabazar, Desh, Aajkal, Sandesh, Suktara, Statesman, Bartaman, the leftist magazines, the rightist ones and so on. Anandalok was strictly banned so that the little ones don't get morally screwed up. But we had our way of getting it with external help :-)

The little ones were allowed to check Desh only for the Feluda story by Satyajit Ray. Desh was a regular magazine in our household, which I have seen from the time I can remember anything - it used to be a weekly, then fortnightly, then again weekly and so on, before we decided that Desh was losing its literary value and stopped subscribing couple of years back. But Desh was the first magazine in our childhood which gave us flavor of literature meant for big guys. That's another story for another day. 

These days, Anandabazar house has increased the number of Puja Barshikis to a great extent. They come out with Anandamela, Desh, Patrika, Anandalok, Sanada and possibly many more - they have something or the other for all the target groups. But if you want to try out different flavors of literature, there are those other brands like Pratidin, Bartaman and also the small magazines. 

There is a good number of people who blindly go for one of these brands, while there are others who search for a particular author and buy the one which has a story from him/her. During our college days, Joy Goswami used to be the star amongst the intellectuals. I remember, for a couple of years I chose between Anandabazar and Desh depending upon who is carrying his Uponyash. 

There is a standard snobbery which prevails upon the readers - Puja barshiki works are not of good quality as the authors churn out too many things in too less a time. There is some truth in it possibly. However there are classics which have come out of the Puja barshikis also. My take - keep aside the snobbery, and get submerged into the sea of literature. Its a unique phenomenon - you don't get to see such a spike in any other regional language literature consumption during any other part of the year. Just buy your favorite one and have a happy Puja.

* The Feluda image is obviously by Satyajit Ray - tribute to him. The Durga image is from last year, taken by yours truly.

Durga Puja, Kolkata & Raghu Rai

Raghu Rai is one of my favorite photographers of all time. All of his pictures tell a thousand stories. I happened to participate in a Raghu Rai workshop few years back, where he talked about how he approached photography and to say the least, it was an amazing experience listening him. He is an engineer by qualification, but took up photography as his passion and continued his journey to become one of the most talked about photographers of India. He told stories behind couple of his famous photographs, including those of Indira & obviously about the Bhopal pictures.

The photograph in this post was taken in 1999 at Kumartuli by Raghu Rai, where the Durga idols are created every year. These days, the young and enthusiast photographers make a beeline during this period with their newly acquired DSLRs, at times irritating the artisans. Sharing this picture, as a tribute to both the artisans at Kumartuli and to Raghu Rai.

Previous post on Durga Puja, 2013: Click here.

The Bong Festival is close by

That lovely part of the year is coming soon. The festival kick-starts from Ratha Yatra which was on 10th July this year. On that day, the artisans start creating the Durga idol. The Puja is still a few months away, but the planning for the multi-crore mega-show has already began. What is your plan this year?

Next post on Durga Puja, 2013: Click here.

Happy Puja

Durga @ 08

Picasa 3 helped to create the collage with images taken at various pandals in Kolkata (Bagbajar, Tridhara, Jodhpur Pk, Telengabagan, Deshapriya Pk, Jatra Suru Sangha, Sabuj Sangha etc).

Festivity

Enough prints have been used/wasted to capture different shapes/moods of the Durga idol. But as ever I get more engaged with the people and the symbols around it. This post is a tribute to the symbolisms of our culture and the followers.

You might see fire in many of my pictures. Fire is worshiped in Hindu religion and is respected as the first Visible God (Prottokho Deb). Thats why Agni is the very first word in the oldest Hindu scripture i.e. Wrikbeda, where Agni is considered as the priest in all the Yaggas.

Om Agnimile Purohitam Yaggassa Debmritwijam Hotarang Ratnadhatamam