Transcript of Interview on 24/09/08

BBC Radio Solent. Its time to ask, whats on whats in. Tonight we are talking about Durga Puja, a Hindu Festival Durga Puja that is being held in Hampshire for the first time. I am joined by two guests from Southampton Puja and Cultural Association: on the line President Dr Sujit Sahu (who is joining us from London) and in in the studio Secretary Dr Koushik Maharatna-right in front of me. Good Evening to you both.

Good Evening

Let me start with you Koushik. I apologise for my pronounciation: Duurga Puuja. Koushik, what is it?

Right. Not a problem. Your proounciation is absolutely fine. Durga puja is the biggest festival of India, particularly Bengal. Around Durga puje we manifest all our cultural things, we meet our family. Its exactly like Christmas the Christians have. There is some mythological origin of Durga Puja. The biggest part is the cultural festival. So if you want to know us about the mysthological origin, I can tell you.

Well, I may ask you in a second. Let me ask you Sujit. We have been living in Southampton without it for so many years and it happens in other cities in the UK, is n't it?

Yeah! Almost every major city in the UK haa a Durga Puja or two. We did not find one in southampton. d

Aweful, you have been going through life in Southampton, effectively not celebrating Christmas!

Thats exactly correc. Those of us who want to participate have to travel to London and/or some other venues. Usually, the festival falls in weekdays. That disrupts our children's education, missed school days, our work life. So we decided that we can do something to address that.

I see and its coming to Hampshire for the very first time. Koushik, do please tell me the mythology behind it.

Right, I will try to keep it brief Essentially, what heppened was that this buffalo daemon worshipped Bramha, one of the trinity of Hinduism and Brahma gave him the boon that you can only be killed by a woman. This deamon started ransacking the whole world thinking that he was immortal. All the Gods lost their place and they were thrown out from the heaven. So they went to the trinity, Brahma, Bishnu and Shiva. They put together all their strength to create one woman who is the supreme mother of the universe and she would kill the buffalo daemon and thats the origin of Durga puja.

Thats Durga.

Every god gave her some kind of weapon to fight the daemon and finally she killed the daemon.

Ok.

Its the triumph of good human nature over the evil (daemon) that we celebrate.

Ok, its Durga Puja thats happening for the very first time in Southampton. We are going to find out a little bit more about it. Whats involved in it? What are we going to celebrate? Everybody invited, thats the most important point. But first here is some music....

Talking about Durga Puja (a hindu festival) on Whats on Whats in this evening with Koushik Maharatna in the studio with me and Dr Sujit Sahu on the line from London. We were talking about the fact that Durga Puja is about five days in Bengal. Unless my calendar deceives me, you are only doing over two and half days.

Well, its mainly because we just want to put everything in the weekend because we do not want to take leave from our work...

And also we want to take it local people so that they can come and join us. Also people from nearby cities can also come enjoy the full festivities.

This is the idea, is n't it? Its not goin to be just a hindu festival. The hope is that anybody can come along. Sujit, what can they look forward to? What would be some of the things happening?

There would be two cultural programmes, one on Saturday evening starting about 7:30PM. We have the group Arts Bengal from Birmingham, they would be performing a variety cultural programme. There will be Bengali short-plays, English recitation, songs, and so on. Also on Sunday we have a home grown cultural programme. We want our children to be creative, to learn and then to perform in front of audience, like dancing, singing, playing guitar--all sorts of creative activities. Because, puja really inspires us to do this sort of creative activities and thats what we celebrate.

I see, Koushik, presumably we talked about how it happens in ] other cities across the UK for a number of years. Is there one nearby we are going to draw people in from across to this Puja?

Umm, I think there is none because the closest puja is either is in Cardiff or in London, so for the cities Winchester, Dorset etc we will be able to pull the people here.

Portsmouth.

Fantastic. How many people are you expecting?

Over 900 people over three days.

Brilliant! Good stuff! Sujit, presumably if this is a success its a kind of thing you will doing again. Does it happen exactly a year apart?

Almost, almost, it depends on the movement of the moon relative to the Sun. We believe that our task has just begun. We are seeking commitment and continuity to carry this momentum forward to the next year. Also our aim is to have our association as a registered charity in England and Wales. But, in the meantime we can nominate a charity so that we can donate. Everytime we organise an event like this we can help less fortunate people at the time of our most joyus occasion. Are we coming to a close. We must give puja greetings to everyone in Southampton and your listeners, otherwise its not complete.

Its.....

Koushik, I do not want to cut you off there. There is a few more seconds. There is a website: www.southamptonpuja.org.uk where people can find more information. Final question to you Koushik, with puja just around the corner you have put on so much work into preparing this -- you must be very excited, you must be quite nervous too.

Yeah- well our job is to stand in front of students and give lectures, so we are kind of proof to this kind of nervousness. But we are very much excited to hold this for the first time. We hope, that we will be able to show our true culture to the English people and we will draw all of them together to integrate with the society.

Well, I wish you all the best of luck. More can be found out from www.southamptonpuja.org.uk. Sujit Koushik do you want to give Puja greetings before we wrap things up.

Yeah! Just for the website you can google search on Southampton and Puja. The puja greetings is: May you prosper with friends, family and fame and fortune. Please do join us in our celebration.

I should return the puja greetings to you guys too, presumably.

Thank you, thank you, Its so kind of you. Cheers.