Durga Arrived

‘Dugga ebar asbini go, Dugga ebar asbini!’ (Durga will not come this year!) Pagla Dadu, the septuagenarian mad man danced around the village letting everyone know that this year Goddess Durga will not come to her maternal home. Kids threw pebbles at him; women out at the village pond washing clothes used expletives, while the men who sat under the banyan tree and discussed the budget for the annual Durga Puja watched him as if he were some clown in a circus. Pagla Dadu kept repeating the same phrase over and over again. And when people got angry, they burnt...