I have celebrated Durga Puja in Chennai,u00e2u0080u0088Mumbai, Delhi and Guwahati. My concept of womanhood is more respectful than that of the Hindutva crowd – be it in their devotion to “how one should behave,” or in their devotion to Donald Trump

Today is the Navami of Durga Puja, and I always like to tell people how, during the four Pujas that I observed in Chennai, I used to visit the Bengalis’ pandal in Besant Nagar, near the beach in South Madras; the first time time I went I burst out laughing because the Goddess looked like an LTTE suicide bomber. (“Shhh,” my wife scolded me.) In a burst of sub-nationalist uber-patriotism I dragged her and our three kids to the Bihar association’s pandal in Gopalapuram. It was sad and deserted, but the stragglers came to life when they discovered that an Editor-in-Chief was one of their own, and they were so insistent on the evening programmes that my wife and I fled, never to return.