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.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Categories
Tags
Indira S. Somani, Ph.D. is an Independent Documentary Filmmaker. After a 26-year-career as a television newscast producer and broadcast journalism professor, Somani moved to LA and enrolled in the MFA in Directing/Production, Documentary film program at UCLA. Currently in production is a personal documentary about her role as a caregiver for her Mom who battles depression. The film reveals how much Somani and her mother rely on each other for emotional support. Other films Somani has directed and produced include Life on the Ganges (2017), a 10- minute documentary directed, produced and filmed in Varanasi, India, during Dev Diwali, when people from all over India travel there to bathe in the Ganges River. The film screened in film festivals in the U.S., India and Europe and won Best Short Documentary at the Berlin Independent Film Festival, and the Cannes Short Film Festival. Another film Somani directed, produced and wrote was, Crossing Lines (2007), a 30-minute personal essay documentary about her struggle to stay connected to India after the loss of her father and to maintain and preserve her Indian cultural identity. The film won numerous awards, screened in film festivals nationally and internationally, aired on PBS affiliates through NETA from 2008-2011, and has been used by more than 100 universities as a tool to teach intercultural communication in the classroom. Both films are in distribution through New Day films.
Somani’s doctoral research studied the media habits and effects of satellite television on the Indian diaspora, specifically the generation of the Asian Indians in the Washington, DC metro area, who migrated to the U.S. between 1960 and 1972. She expanded her research to study the media habits, acculturation, and social identity of the same generation in the New York-New Jersey area, San Francisco, Houston and Chicago. For the fall of 2011, Somani was awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship to study the Western influence of Indian programming in India.
While teaching at Howard University’s School of Communications from 2012-2021, Somani’s research shifted to study Black Broadcast Journalists and how race had an impact on their success in the newsroom. She has been published in several academic journals and has also co-authored two book chapters.
Somani’s academic career was preceded by 10 years as a television news producer, most notably with CNBC and WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C. Somani has also been a leader of the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), where she has also won several “Outstanding” awards for her coverage of South Asians in North America. Prior to teaching at Howard, Somani taught 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 Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park in 2008. Somani is expected to earn her MFA in Directing/Production from UCLA by Dec. of 2022.