The recently released advertisement by Reliance for its Smart Super Store addresses the age-old tradition of using brothel soil in creating Durga idols and raises an important question.
“This Pujo, let's ask something we should've asked years ago. #TheSecondQuestionSubho Sharodiyar Priti O Shubhechha #durgapujo #pujo #pujo2022 #maadurga #kindness #celebration #togetherness #kolkata #festive #festivecelebration #shortfilm #film” captioned the video.
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As per age-old traditions of Durga pujo, one of the most essential ingredients for making a Durga idol is the soil from the doorstep of sex workers. The soil from the brothel is considered to be sacred and one of the purest as it was believed that men leave their “virtues” and “purity” on the soil before entering the brothel.
Though the tradition remains unchanged to date and priests still visit sex workers’ houses to collect the soil from their hands, the stigma against sex workers has still not changed. This video addresses the same.
In this video, when Shubhro Da (played by Bengali actor Shantilal Mukherjee), a priest with an experience of 25 years in the profession, receives an order to make a Durga idol, he steps into the nishiddho palli (forbidden street) to a sex worker’s doorstep. She recognises him quickly and asks if he is here for the soil and goes to collect some for him and hands it over to him. Meanwhile, her daughter comes forward to say that while he comes every year to collect soil to make the Durga idol, they never get to see it and asks whether she can see it this year.
As Shubhro Da returns home and begins working on his idol, his wife asks whether he asked the “other” question that they should have asked 25 years ago. Later, both visit the same sex worker again and ask her if she and her daughter would celebrate Durga pujo with them together.
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In another initiative this year, one of the pandals in Kolkata has gone with a unique theme ‘Parichay’ (identity) by honouring the lives of sex workers. The pandal of the Nawpara Dadabhai Sangh Pujo Committee in Kolkata depicts the society the sex workers live in, the way people see them, and how they are often subjected to remain anonymous without an identity. The Durga idol is made of silicon (a first for the city’s pujos as most idols are made of clay and straw) has been installed in the pandal already. It has been given the form of a mother with a baby in her lap to show how a sex worker can be many things, among which she can also be a fiesty mother.