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Anjali: No matter how tired or buzzed we are from last night’s revelry, decking up in the only ethnic outfit we have bought for Puja and rushing to the pandal to offer Ashtami anjali is a must. Some do it for faith, some for maska, many of us to appease the Ma at home.
Bhashaan: On any other day if you dance on the roads like a loon you’d probably be arrested. So, we look forward to bhashaan to dance to our heart’s content on the road. The crazier the dance moves the likelier you are to be declared the bhashaan dance king/queen.
Candy floss: It is the only pink thing that even boys don’t refuse during Puja. It is sickly sweet and disgustingly sticky, precisely why it is a Puja must-have.
Condom: We never leave home without one in our wallet because you never know when you or your friend (don’t you love being someone’s life-saver?) might get lucky. Yes, we do care about being safe rather than sorry.
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Durgabaari: It is one of the popular youth hangouts and has to be visited at least once during the four days.
Dry days: Puja becomes a complicated mathematical equation, thanks to the dry days and complex off-shop hours. You have to calculate the number of people, divide the number of pegs in a bottle, add it up to calculate how many bottles and then multiply them by the number of dry days. We do this even before Panchami.
Extended curfew: However strict our folks may be for the rest of the year, for these festive days we are allowed to leave and enter home as we wish.
Egg roll: No Puja is complete without wolfing down one or many oil-dripping double egg rolls, and no egg roll worth its bite is complete without a cold drink from a glass bottle. Classic!
Ferris wheel: It takes 30 minutes of standing in queue for a five-minute spin above the ground but boy are they fun! And we HAVE to SCREAM.
Fizzy drinks: We need it to quench our thirst during a marathon pandal-hop, we need it to wash down the oily street food and we need it to hide the fact that we are drinking at five in the evening, from our parents or the parar kakus.
Go-betweens: “Please tell your friend I like her.” “What did she say?” “Can you give him this note?” It is a pain in the behind for those who get roped in for the role of a go-between, but you can’t deny that they are the most important people, and powerful too, given that they hold the key to so many budding romances.
Hashtags: #Puja is now as much virtual as it is real and everything from #Addas to #PandalsSeen will be reported online with the ever-present hashtag to make ’em noticeable.
Hangovers: If anyone says they have not woken up at least one Puja day hoping they could just keel over and die, then we will call them a liar (no offence teetotallers)! It will happen and it will be nasty and, at least for the Pujas, the only solution will be getting the next peg in as soon as possible. Hic! Hic! Hurray!
Instagram: So many pictures to click, so many moods to capture, so many selfies with so many friends and where better to flaunt them than on Instagram?! We live for the #Instapic and #Instamood moments.
Keorami: It is not slang, it is THE spirit of GenY’s Puja. It is just the freedom to do and say exactly what we want to and how we want to. If you don’t understand the fun of it, then you are old. Really old.
Love: Saraswati Puja maybe Calcutta’s Valentine’s Day but Durga Puja is not too far away in the reckoning for romance. Long-distance lovers meet up after ages, ghotkali romances blossom and blind dates rule. This is the time for love.
Lyad: You can call it vegetating or velapanthi, the fact is, lyad is an integral part of our life. So, how can the holidays be complete without indulging in the art of whiling away time doing absolutely nothing?
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Maddox: No matter how hard it is raining or how soggy the ground is, a visit to Maddox Square is like a Puja pilgrimage for us. Nothing beats strumming a guitar on the Maddox grounds, flirting with strangers and generally having a whale of a time.
Night-outs: No curfew means party all night, from insane house parties to even more insane all-nighters going all over town!
Overpriced: Everything from taxi fare to street food and bottled water seems to cost double during Puja. It is bad for our pockets because it means spending the rest of the month broke!
Phuchka: You know what a single mouthful of heaven is? It starts with a ‘p’ and ends with an ‘a’ and makes for a midnight meal during Puja. And those phuchka-eating competitions are stuff of legend.
Palazzo: It is P for palazzos for us girls this Puja. They are trendy, comfy and available in a variety of prints and colours.
Queues: You can’t escape them anywhere. Whether it is at a restaurant, in front of a pandal, at a food stall or at the balloon shooting range, you just have to fall in line.
Radio taxis: With agreeable cabbies becoming rarer than Virat Kohli’s smile, the radio taxi services — think newbies Uber to Meru — are going to be our lifeline, especially late in the night and when we are high on, er, life. Don’t say we are not responsible and parking is a bitch during Puja anyway!
Sari: We baulk at the thought of draping all those yards of cloth around us at other times but during Puja we don’t mind the rain, slush or heat, we girls HAVE to wear it at least one day. And we boys love to look at our friends and crushes in their ethnic best.
Sindur khela: So what if we are not married? We won’t give sindur khela on Dashami a miss because artfully smeared red makes for gorgeous photographs. Perfect DP (display picture for you oldies) material.
Tipple: We have groaned enough about hangovers and dry days to make it clear that our Puja is incomplete without alcohol. Don’t worry parents/ aunts/uncles/any other oldies reading this, we drink responsibly.
Umbrella: You don’t want to leave home with it, your mother won’t let you leave without it. We just can’t make them understand that a chhata puts a serious dent in our swag.
Vocal chord: It is the biggest casualty of the Pujas. We have to yell to be heard over the din and then there are all those times when we sing at the top of our voice just for fun, and round off the Pujas screaming our lungs out with, “Bolo Dugga Mai ki joy” during bhashaan.
Weight-watching: The most crucial prep in the run-up to the Pujas goes for a toss from Saptami. Because pigging out with friends is as important as looking good on the four festive days.
Xmas tree: Not the leafy kind you deck up for Christmas but the human kind that our eyes are subjected to every Puja. The bling overdo makes us want to whip out our sunnies at night.
YOLO: You Only Live Once is our motto for everything, even more so for Puja. We live every Puja as if it is our last, who knows where we’ll all be next Puja!
Zones: There are so many zones during Puja — parking, walking, no-smoking. Oh and some unlucky ones even end up in the friend zone! *snigger*
