17 October 2026
Yesterday, Kolkata came to worship.
They carried their prayers, their hopes,
their children perhaps by the hand,
and the simple faith that they would return home.
**
The drums were beating. The lights were burning.
The Goddess was waiting.
And somewhere in that restless sea of humanity, seventeen lives slipped away,
not in battle,
not in the fury of nature,
but in the terrible chaos of a night that should have been a celebration.
**
Today, we will count the dead.
We will speak of compensation,
issue statements, promise inquiries,
and perhaps, in time,
learn to live with the news.
But how does a mother learn to live
with the silence of a child who will never again call her home?
How does a father return to a house
where one voice is missing, where a pair of shoes waits by the door,
where yesterday still lives and tomorrow has ceased to exist?
**
Do not tell me this was fate. Do not ask the Goddess to bear the burden of our failures.
What is the meaning of worship
if we cannot protect the living?
What is the sanctity of a festival
if human lives become expendable
in the pursuit of devotion and spectacle?
The drums will beat again. The lights will shine again. Kolkata will return to its celebrations.
But somewhere, seventeen homes will remain dark.
**
And perhaps the most painful prayer
we can offer the Goddess this year
is not for her blessings,
but for the wisdom to become worthy of them.
In musing…… Shakti Ghosal
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