Many Faces Of Durga

MOTHER Teresa lives on in Calcutta's collective consciousness. A month after her death, she joins Durga and a pantheon of other gods and goddesses during Durga Puja. For the city's dotty puja organisers, who compete fiercely with outsize budgets to produce the most glittering pandal, Mother is the pick of the season. "She's topical (news). She was also our last icon," says one.

So, in Kumartuli, the city of joy's muddy district of idol-makers, artisans are working overtime to meet the overwhelming demand for Mother Teresa figurines. Pro-dip Paul, for example, is working on a 10-ft idol for a north Calcutta organiser for a cool Rs 12,000. He's also working on five other Mother idols out of a cast to speed up work. For Hatibagan's Argha Puja Committee, artisans are working on three one-and-a-half ft images depicting the life and death of the saint—one model shows Mother tending to lepers, the second fast forwards to her lying in state at the St Thomas Church and the third shows the funeral cortege. Competing with Mother in the topicality sweepstakes is, you guessed it right, Princess Diana. When news of her tragic death arrived, Argha Puja Committee lost no time in ordering an image of her for its pandal. Mother's death changed plans on the 'run': residents of Hari Ghosh Street, where the puja is located, noisily demanded that Mother replace Diana. In true

Bengali tradition, a quirky consensus was hammered out: Mother and Diana would coexist. So a three-image slice of Diana's life has been ordered: of the princess with her family, the next jump to a tryst with Dodi Al-Fayed and the third the car crash in a sloppy Paris backdrop complete with scrawny paparazzi.

It's not only Diana who's giving stiff competition to Mother. The 50th year of India's Independence has expectedly whipped up native hysteria.Artisan Montu Pal is saddled with a 70-image order of Netaji for a Tollygunge puja. Pop nationalism is also on display—one artisan drapes his Durga in a tricolour sari, another turns the asura into a vile and pallid English soldier; one pandal will actually show Netaji killing the English asura, history and mythology be damned. Other 'topical' images include Rabri Devi in clay taking an oath in College Square pandal. But choosing Mother came easy even for the politically correct organisers. As a whacky poster plastered on Mother House these days says: "East or West, Mother is the best."