I’ve waited my whole life to celebrate two important festivals in India, Durga Puja and Diwali. Last week was the first time I spent Durga Puja in Kolkata, India, filming all the rituals. As mentioned in earlier blogs, I’m half Bengali and my mother has always tried to keep my Bengali roots alive by making sure we celebrate Durga Puja in the U.S. properly. But I had no idea how elaborate this celebration was until I visited Kolkata during this time of year. Durga Puja was like a giant carnival and the entire city celebrated by visiting the puja pandals, eating finger foods sold by the street vendors and buying souvenirs. At night the whole city lit up like Christmas in the U.S. as many buildings as well as street lamps were decorated with lights. It was humid and hot compared to Bangalore, and I could barely manage in my khaki pants and cotton kurtis. But the Kolkata women were dressed in gorgeous saris of all colors and fabrics flaunting their best attire in honor of Ma Durga despite the weather. In many ways I felt like I was seeing Kolkata for the first time, even though I have traveled here my whole life and even had my own annaprashan here.
I arrived on Saturday, Oct. 1 and stayed with my uncle, mom’s brother, (Mamu), my aunt (Mamima) and cousin, Tinku. The puja started on Sunday, Oct. 2 and that day is called Sashti. Mamu, Mamima, Tinku and I went pandal hopping in North Kolkata. The pandals were of Ma Durga with her four children, Lord Ganesha to her far right, then Goddess Laxmi, and to her immediate left Goddess Saraswati and then Lord Kartik to her far left. I didn’t know these beautiful structures were called pandals, but I have seen these in the U.S. at Durga Baris (also known as temples that have a specific focus on Ma Durga). This structure was depicted in so many styles all over Kolkata, and these pandals were built only for Durga Puja. Some pandals even win prizes.
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Indira S. Somani, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Media, Journalism and Film at Howard University, Washington, D.C. Somani studies effects of satellite television on the Indian diaspora, specifically the generation of the Asian Indians who migrated to the U.S. between 1960 and 1972, and their media habits.
She has been published in the Howard Journal of Communication, Journal of Communication Inquiry, International Communication Research Journal, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, and the Asian Journal of Communication.
For the fall of 2011, Somani was awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship to study the Western influence of Indian programming in India.
Somani is also an award winning independent producer and director of documentaries. Her most recent production, Life on the Ganges (2016), is a 10- minute documentary short about the life of one boatman, who rows tourists along the Ganges River in Varanasi, India, particularly around Dev Diwali when people from all over India travel there to bathe in the Ganges to wash away their sins and purify their souls. The film has been screening in film festivals all over the U.S.
Another production, Crossing Lines (2007), is a personal essay 30-minute documentary about her struggle to stay connected to India after the loss of her father, and about how Asian Indians maintain and preserve their cultural identity. The film has won numerous awards, screened in film festivals nationally and internationally, screened on PBS affiliates, and has also been distributed to more than 100 university libraries in the U.S. through New Day films.
Somani brings 10 years of broadcast journalism experience as a television news producer to the classroom, most notably with CNBC and WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C. She has been a leader of the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), where she has also won several “Outstanding” awards on her coverage of South Asians in North America.
Prior to joining Howard University, Somani was an Assistant Professor of Journalism at Washington and Lee University (Lexington, VA) and American University’s School of Communication (Washington, DC). Somani earned her Master’s in Journalism from the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University in 1993, and her Ph.D. from the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park in May 2008.