Nostalgic Delights: Childhood Joy During Rath Yatra

Our member Mr. A. K. Gangopadhyay, had a delightful childhood in the pristine atmosphere of Shantipur. He shares the wonderful experience that he had there which cannot be recreated.

During my childhood, I was brought up in a place called Shantipur. A place in the outskirts of Kolkata, nearly 100 km away. It was well known for the sarees which the weavers made there.

As villages used to be, it had a lot of greenery, open spaces, ponds and a lot of trees around. We, as children had a splendid time there.

A main attraction in those days were the Ratha Yatra. Unlike other places where Lord Jagannath is worshipped as the main deity, in Shantipur Lord Raghunath was the main deity worshipped. I was never keen on knowing why it was so, but enjoyed seeing the big idol of Raghuvir, which looked more human than the rest.

The weavers had started with this festival and every year religiously it was followed. Initially the Ratha or the chariot was built with the wood of discarded weaving machine. Every one of the weavers used to donate whatever old, unused wooden parts of the weaving machine they had and the carpenter used to put them together and skillfully make the chariot. The chariot was big and was of two tiers. It was almost 24 ft in height and was square in shape, each side being almost 10 ft. The idols were made to sit at a height, from where they could be visible to everyone easily. The chariot was decorated with garlands of flowers, and looked beautiful. Thick ropes were tied to the Ratha and people thronged in huge numbers to pull it.

We as small kids enjoyed watching this from far. For us the main attraction was the Rather mela or fair which used to be set up every year. We enjoyed the papad and jalebis sold there.  As a child I never used to get pocket money, likewise even my friends didn’t. In the mela hand fans used to be sold and were in great demand. We too went and asked the stall owners to let us sell. Whatever money we earned from selling them we used spend in buying papad. Jalebis were expensive, so we were satisfied with papad. We had a wonderful time for a week or seven-days till the Ratha Yatra was celebrated.

Those were such nice and innocent days. The simplicity amidst which we had grown up, has no match with the changing times, and fast paced world. But even without too many facilities, we had a splendid life.