Echoes of Udayagiri: The Architecture of Memory
Nandini Sahu There are festivals that one celebrates. And there are festivals that one inhabits. For me, Dussehra belonged to the second category.It did not happen at Udayagiri merely as a festival marked on the calendar. It always came as a smell, a sound, a colour, a kitchen full of steam, six girls fighting over mirrors, new clothes folded carefully on a bed, sweets cooling on steel plates, my mother’s impatient voice travelling from the kitchen to every corner of the house, and my father’s measured voice reading aloud the Sudasha Brata Katha. It arrived with the distant beat of the dhol. And, sometimes, with the sudden, terrible cry of a goat. Even now, after all these years, I can hear both. Udayagiri was our universe then. We did not know that one day we would leave it.We did not know that the house which contained our laughter would eventually become an old, dilapidated structure, slowly surrendering itself to dust, rain, moss, and memory. We did not know that the six daughters would scatter across cities and countries, building lives of our own. We did not know that Baba would one day be gone, leaving behind an absence too large for any house to contain. We only knew that Dussehra was coming. And that meant new clothes.For six sisters, new clothes were not simply clothes. They were an annual declaration that life had been generous to us once again. The dresses would arrive wrapped carefully, and the six of us would examine them with the seriousness of cabinet ministers discussing national policy. Someone’s dress would invariably be considered prettier than someone else’s. Someone would complain that her sister had received a better colour. Someone would hold a dress against herself and turn before the mirror. Someone would secretly touch another sister’s fabric and declare that hers was softer.And then, inevitably, there would be negotiations. Six sisters meant six opinions, six temperaments, six versions of justice. We were a small parliament without a constitution. The oldest sisters behaved as though they had inherited administrative powers. The younger ones challenged those powers. There were arguments, alliances, accusations, and temporary treaties. Five minutes later, we would be sitting together, sharing something sweet.That was our childhood. We quarrelled intensely and loved instinctively. We were never alone. Perhaps that is why loneliness, when it came much later in life, felt so unnatural.On Dussehra mornings, the house transformed. Maa began cooking long before the rest of us had fully awakened. She seemed to possess an inexhaustible capacity for work. Her hands moved continuously—washing, cutting, grinding, stirring, frying, arranging. The kitchen became her kingdom, and on festival days, we became her reluctant but willing subjects. She was not a euphonic woman. She was rather cacophonic. I must say this honestly because a memoir is not the place for convenient mythology. Maa could be impatient. Her voice could rise. Her instructions could sound like commands issued during a military emergency. If one of us disappeared when work had to be done, she would find her.But beneath that severity was an extraordinary tenderness. She cooked for us. She cared for us. She worked until exhaustion. And on Dussehra, exhaustion seemed to become another ingredient in the food she prepared. We helped her throughout the day, washing utensils, arranging things, bringing ingredients, cleaning, carrying plates, and attending to the endless small requirements of a household preparing for guests. Sometimes we helped willingly. Sometimes we helped because Maa’s eyes told us that refusal would be a foolish experiment. And sometimes we helped while laughing. That laughter mattered. The kitchen was never entirely silent. Someone was always telling a story, teasing another sister, stealing a sweet, being caught, pretending innocence, and then being exposed by another sister.There were cakes, pitha, and sweets made at home. The word cake itself carried a certain magic for us. Today, cakes can be ordered with a few taps on a phone. In our childhood, a homemade cake was an event. Its arrival from the kitchen seemed almost ceremonial. We waited. We watched. We calculated. Could we take one piece? Could we take another? Would Maa notice? She always noticed.There were sweets, too, plates and plates of them. Festival food had an abundance that seemed almost limitless to a child. The house smelled of sugar, ghee, spices, and fried delicacies. The fragrance travelled beyond the kitchen, through the rooms, through the courtyard, and perhaps even into the street. And relatives came. Friends came. Neighbours came. People entered and left, greeted each other, talked, laughed, ate, blessed us, asked us questions, admired our dresses, and commented on how much we had grown. For a few days, our house became a crossroads. Everyone seemed to know everyone. There was no concept of privacy. There was only family. And family, in those days, was a word much larger than it is today. It included relatives, neighbours, friends, visiting elders, familiar faces from the locality, and the invisible network of affection that held a small town together.In the midst of all this movement sat Baba. He was the still centre of our noisy universe. My father was a high-school teacher. But to me, as a child, he was much more than that. He was our benevolent God. Not the distant God of temples. Not the God who sat beyond clouds and listened to prayers from a great cosmic distance. Our God lived in our house. He read. He taught. He protected. He watched. He had faith in his daughters. Six daughters. No son. In a society where the absence of a son could be treated almost as a family tragedy, Baba never made us feel that we were an incomplete family. We were his children. That was enough.On Dussehra, one of the memories that returns to me most vividly is Baba reading aloud the Sudasha Brata Katha and Durga Stotram. We had to listen. We had to sit straight. We had to understand. We had to accept. Those were the
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