Senbari of Guptipara is in Hooghly’s Balagarh subdivision.
I was there just ahead of Durga Puja. It was at the local moira or confectioner’s that I learnt about the Sen family that hosts the oldest puja of the area. “It is several hundred years old,” I was told. Something must have betrayed my inner sceptic, because my guide for the day Partha Chatterjee, who teaches in a college in the area, spoke of the mystery surrounding Senbari’s Lakshmi idol.
According to him, the idol has been missing its mount for a couple of centuries now.
My curiosity got the better of me. That very day, I enquired my way to Senbari, a palatial but obviously olden structure at one end of Guptipara.
I went in through a regular-sized wooden door and found myself in a near empty courtyard. I could not see right into the Durga mandap but the place felt ancient. It was afternoon and all was shrouded in silence. Far away, a bird screeched and a woman appeared. The person accompanying me told her I was there to know more about the pyancha or owl.
The woman without batting an eyelid ushered me into the backyard, as if this was just a routine thing, a stranger walking in with an owl request.
“That is where they stay,” she said as we walked through a narrow passage. She used the formal Bengali collective pronoun “onara”. I assumed she was talking about the Sen family.
Once we walked into a garden full of trees — aam, bel, kathal, neem — she stopped and pointed to a corner room on the first floor of the palatial house. The wall had a rectangular hole in it, much smaller than a window, the size of a railway ticket counter. “That’s the place,” she said. This time I understood; the “they” in question was the mystery owl and its ilk, but it still didn’t explain the case of the missing
clay pyancha.
Days later, in Calcutta, I got to hear the rest of the story.
Subhajit Sen, who belongs to the 20th generation of the Sen family, says, “Guptipara was once a lush place, filled with animals and birds.” Subhajit’s uncle Anjan Sen says, “The story goes that owls used to live in the grove adjoining Senbari. And when one of our ancestors, Krishnachandra Sen, built the family home in Guptipara, he decided to keep a room only for the owls.”
According to Anjan, owls typically do not leave a nest. Their progeny live in the same place unless they feel unsafe. I dial a naturalist and he confirms this. This is a behaviour true of the lokkhi pyancha or barn owl as well.
“We have always tried to make these birds feel at home,” continues Anjan. Because Senbari had resident owls, the family decided not to go in for a clay model of one, lest it offends the living birds.
The owl room has its own rules. The door to it is unlocked only once a year. There is a dedicated keeper who is aware of the nature of these somewhat cantankerous birds. He enters the room once a year only to clean it. Owls are carnivores. They hunt snakes, rabbits and other small animals, and carry the food into the room. Sometimes the room smells of rotten meat, says Anjan.
“They unwillingly march to one corner of the room and look suspiciously at the keeper. They do not harm but they are very uncomfortable if they have a newborn,” says Subhajit.
The adjoining room is where the family’s puja utensils are kept. “But we ensure that we don’t make too much noise in that room either. It might disturb the birds,” says Anjan.
Another family member, Shaktibrata Sen, pulls out the story of how Lakshmi paid a visit to Senbari and left her owl behind. “Since then, the owls have been living here,” he says.
Part fact or mostly fiction, it does not matter, this is a fond lore of Guptipara. Some say these immaculate owls appear just before Mahalaya and leave after Kali Puja. Others claim they have seen the auspicious bird perched atop Senbari’s Durga mandap.
In the quiet of the night, these birds pay obeisance to the presiding deity of well-being without any ado.