'She sparkled and rippled with laughter like the billowing fronds of a bunch of kash grass beside some lonely river bank', the great Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) writes of a woman in his story 'The Raj Seal'. Who would have thought that pampas grass could seem so romantic? In Bengal the flowering of kash (known as 'pampas grass', but in fact a type of saccharum) is a welcome sign that autumn has arrived, that the monsoon has passed, that cooler weather is on its way. It also heraldsthe puja season, when festivals are held to honour a succession of goddesses: Durga, Lakshmi, Kali. Looking out of a window in north Calcutta, I am struck by glossy leaves and pale pink flowers some form of oleander, perhaps growing in cracks high on the wall of a neighbour's house. I usually visit the city in winter, when the heat has abated and the urban greenery has died back; but in early October ferns are still colonising crumbling brickwork, the bright yellow trumpets of kolkephul (Allamanda cathartica) scramble over the gateways to houses, and clumps of crimson cannas thrust up out of the pavement of a busy street. Enduring daytime temperatures of 33degC and humidity of around 85 per cent, I am here for the pujas because everyone says you cannot really understand Calcutta unless you have witnessed them.
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