The word Pujabarshiki brings back a slew of memories.

All of Bengal’s leading publishing houses and little magazines would bring out special editions of their patrikas around the time of Durga Puja. Thick with sleek covers, which would either feature the ten-handed Goddess and her four children or a piece of scenery typical of Durga Puja, these volumes would be awaited by young and old alike- for the latter, it was a way of revisiting greener, happier days; for the former, it meant being able to catch up with their favourite characters’ latest escapade or being able to read something (obviously age-appropriate) by authors whose books would otherwise have to be surreptitiously read, frequently looking back over one’s shoulder for signs of approaching authority (considering Satyajit Ray’s Feluda was published in Desh, a strictly adult magazine, our parents, young people at the time, will vouch for this remark).

When we think of Pujabarshikis, we tend to focus primarily on the children’s magazines, and the first of the lot to appear in our homes, awaiting our return from school, was Anandamela, the first copies of which would usually make their way into subscribers’ hands by the day of Rath Yatra. Much-awaited staples would include novels by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, usually set in rural Bengal and featuring (often) larger than life characters, including lost princes, magicians, fearsome but well-meaning dacoits, dilapidated houses and friendly ghosts. The most famous of these novels is probably Manojder Odbhut Bari, which was recently made into a film. And a couple of months after they were first published, these novels would grace the shelves of Ananda Publisher’s stalls in book fairs across Bengal, slim hardbound copies to be bought and kept as part of Shirshendu’s Odbhututre series.

Shirshendu still graces the pages of Anandamela’s annual edition, but there are other childhood favourites who no longer appear between the covers. Kakababu, a retired government servant who’d lost a leg but set off on adventures accompanied by his nephew Shontu, kept children enthralled until 2012, when creator Sunil Gangopadhyay passed away. The last Kakababu novel, Golokdhadhai Kakababu, was posthumously published.

While Kakababu was an explorer and adventurer and not a detective, quite a few detectives have stepped into the literary world from the pages of Anandamela. One of them, Pragyaparomita Mukherjee, assisted by her niece Tupur (who calls her Mitimmashi), is one of Bengal’s only female detectives. Unlike so many of her male counterparts, she has both a roaring professional and a personal life, equally adept at assuming disguises and shadowing potential suspects and helping her son with his homework (her incredible efficiency is a nod to the Bengali adage- Je rnadhey, shey chul o bnadhe). Sadly, awaiting Mitin’s latest exploit, too, is now a thing of the past, creator Suchitra Bhattacharya having passed away in 2015. Interestingly, while most of the stories are for children, a couple of Mitinmashi’s adventures feature adult cases and have not been published in Anandamela. Not that Anandamela was the only children’s magazine in the market- Shuktara, from publishing house Deb Shahityo Kutir, was another hot favourite that had its own hallowed set of annual contributors- there would be detective stories by Prafulla Roy featuring Ayan and Rahul, teenagers aided and abetted by their father’s former student, police officer Subimal. Those acquainted with the works of the late Shantipriyo Bandopadhyay- he was a sports writer who wrote regularly for Shuktara’s monthly editions- would have fond memories of the novels he wrote for Shuktara’s Pujabarshiki. They were detective novels too- a group of children accompanied by Kiki, a talking cockatoo who’d often gouge out the eyes of the villains the children were fighting (one of the girls in the group had been born a princess, and an attempt to kidnap her from her native state formed the plot of one of the novels). The novels stopped with Bandopadhyay’s death, but were later published as slim standalone novels; unfortunately, at the moment, out of print.

Shuktara did not rely exclusively on detectives. There were police procedure stories by Subhash De, based often on real incidents, with a young, athletic and intelligent officer called Shushanto Bose and his sidekick, officer Satyen Ghosh. De would mostly write about cases in and around Kolkata, but Bose has also been seen investigating the arms racket in Munger and helping an old colleague in Tripura (regular subscribers will remember some of De’s stories as two or three-part serials in Shuktara’s monthly editions). There was Francis, a fictional Viking hero created by Anil Bhowmick (the series ended with Bhowmick’s death). Nabanita Dev Sen, until she passed away recently, had regularly written poems and stories.

Pujabarishikis existed way beyond annual extensions of popular magazines, at least where Deb Shahityo Kutir was concerned. When Shuktara was fledging, barely taking its first steps, Puja would be marked by hardbound volumes containing names that exist today not in magazines but in collected works- Ashapurna Debi, Shibram Chakraborty. Sharadindu Bandopadhyay, Tarashankar Banerjee, Premendra Mitra, and more (these have often later been reprinted in Shuktara’s monthly Phirey Dekha section). P. C. Sorcar Sr. wrote articles on magic, often on simple tricks that could be practiced and mastered at home (his son, an equally acclaimed magician, continues the tradition in Shuktara’s monthly editions, while the annuals contain accounts of the Sorcar family’s magic show tours abroad). The books are available, for those interested, in the publisher’s stall in book fairs.

Pujabarshikis remain. So do a new generation of readers- it is we who have changed. The child in us longs for the thrill of the first signs of the approaching Pujas, but we are disappointed by the absence of those who were an integral part of growing up. Something feels missing, hence the oft-repeated rejoinder- ‘Pujabarshikigulo aar aager moto nei.’ Yet, every year, they are as indispensable and as integral a part of celebrations as our new clothes, or the sound of dhak, or kaash flowers dancing in the breeze.