On an ordinary day, crowds are something people try to avoid. They take a different road to escape traffic, abandon a restaurant when the queue is too long and grow impatient when someone walks too slowly.
Yet, when Durga Puja arrives, the same people willingly step into crowded streets, search endlessly for parking and wait for hours outside pandals. Even after a tiring evening, someone is likely to suggest visiting one more. It is a curious contradiction. Why does a crowd that irritates people through the year become part of the joy of a festival?
Perhaps the answer lies in the reason people gather. A crowd on the way to work often feels like an obstacle. Everyone is trying to reach somewhere, and every delay seems to take something away from them. During Puja, however, the crowd is part of the experience.
Nobody goes pandal-hopping expecting empty streets or quiet surroundings. The excitement lies as much in the journey as in the destination. The children pulling their parents towards the lights, friends calling out to one another and families discussing which pandal to visit next become part of the evening. Without them, even the most beautiful pandal might feel strangely incomplete.
There is also a difference between waiting because one has to and waiting because one wants to. Twenty minutes in a bank queue can feel endless, but the same time spent with friends outside a Puja pandal can pass with laughter, conversations and photographs.
The feet may hurt just as much, and the wait may be no shorter, but the experience feels different. When people look forward to something, inconvenience becomes easier to accept. The crowd is no longer merely a collection of strangers standing in the way. It becomes a gathering of people who have stepped out to enjoy the same occasion.
Festivals also bring a kind of togetherness that modern city life often lacks. People may live in the same apartment building for years without knowing their neighbours. They travel beside strangers in traffic, share lifts without speaking and spend evenings behind closed doors. A city can bring people physically close while keeping their lives separate.
During Puja, something changes. People come out of their homes, walk through neighbourhoods and occupy public spaces together.
For a few evenings, the city becomes more than a place to work, travel and sleep. It becomes a place to experience.
This change is particularly visible in Guwahati during Durga Puja. Families travel across the city to visit pandals in neighbourhoods they might otherwise never explore. Roads that usually serve as routes to somewhere become destinations themselves.
Strangers help one another find their way, friends wait for those who have fallen behind, and groups pause to admire the same lights.
The city seems to discover itself all over again. People who may have little in common find themselves sharing an evening, connected briefly by the simple desire to celebrate.
Of course, crowds can be exhausting, and poorly managed gatherings can become unsafe. Traffic, long queues and tired children are real concerns. Not everyone in a festive crowd is happy, either. Someone may be worried about money, carrying private grief or missing a loved one who was there the previous year.
A festival cannot erase these realities. Yet, being among people who are celebrating can offer a small sense of belonging, even when nobody knows a person's name.
Sometimes, simply being present is enough.
Perhaps this is why people complain about the crowd one evening and return to it the next. They know the roads will be congested, the queues will be long and the night will leave them tired. Still, they do not want to miss it. What they seek is not discomfort but participation: the feeling of being part of something larger than their individual lives.
After Puja, the city will return to its familiar rhythm. Crowds will become congestion again, and queues will test everyone's patience. But for a few evenings, strangers become part of a shared memory. Perhaps people do not go looking for crowds because they want more people around them. They go because, in a city where everyone is usually busy going their own way, it feels good to be going somewhere together.