Pujo is around the corner. This time our chief minister has been personally going around inaugurating the 'festival season' more than a week in advance - and I am sure that the vast majority of the residents of the state, as voters, are perfectly happy about it.
How I feel about this season I wrote in detail ten years ago. There has been no reason to change a line in that blogpost. But this year I had a thought: since much about the pujo 'fun' is about monstrous crowds thronging all the pandals around town, and every pujo committee has to worry about squeezing local residents for funds - their budgets ballooning with every passing year - what about charging an entry fee at every public pujo venue? They boast of vast numbers of visitors, don't they, three lakhs, five lakhs at the really big and famous pujos? Well, then, charging the very modest sum of ten rupees per visitor should solve the problem of funds once and for all! As a bonus, the crowds might thin down ever so little, and make pandal-hopping very slightly less of a nightmare for those who do it for the sake of having fun?
.JPG)
