My family’s roots go back to Jessore, in what was once undivided Bengal, and I’ve always carried this quiet fascination for history, culture, and where I come from. Yesterday was Mahalaya, and I went to CR Park to attend a community event. It’s this bustling corner of Delhi that everyone describes as “Mini Kolkata” and honestly, I’d gone there just to feel the festive energy in the air.

But what happened was so much more than I expected.

The Greater Kailash 2 Pujo Society had organized this incredible shobha jatra, and Ma Durga’s idol was being carried through the streets with music and chants and colors everywhere. The energy was electric. The beats of the dhaak drums, the sound of conch shells, the sheer devotion of all these people around me, it was unlike anything I’d experienced in years, even back in Bengal. For this one moment, standing there in the middle of Delhi, I felt like I was home again.

That feeling got me thinking about CR Park itself and how it came to be. This neighborhood, now so upscale and vibrant, wasn’t always like this. Back in the early 1960s, it started as the East Pakistan Displaced Persons Colony. Can you imagine? It was created to give land and shelter to Bengali Hindu families who had to leave everything behind in East Bengal after Partition. So many of them had been torn away from their ancestral homes in what became East Pakistan, and later Bangladesh. The government gave them this patch of land in Delhi that was rocky and harsh, but somehow these families turned it into something beautiful and thriving.

They renamed it Chittaranjan Park in the 1980s, honoring Chittaranjan Das, the nationalist leader. But walk through it today and you’ll see that the heart of this place still beats with pure Bengali culture. The Durga Pujas, mishti shops with sweets that taste exactly like home, those endless adda sessions where people just sit and talk for hours, the bhog that brings everyone together, the music that spills out onto the streets. It really does feel like someone picked up a piece of Kolkata and carefully placed it here for all the Bengalis living far from home.

What completely amazed me, though, was realizing that many of the people who originally came to live here had roots in the exact same land where my ancestors lived. I got goosebumps thinking about it. There could be people in CR Park right now whose grandparents or great-grandparents might have actually known my family back then, might have lived just streets away from where my ancestors walked every day. This invisible thread of history suddenly made me feel like I belonged somewhere I’d never even considered before.

Ma Durga idol being brought to the mandap during the shobha jatra in CR Park

I started digging into Jessore’s story after that, and learned it’s called Jashore now in Bangladesh. The history is so layered and complex. It was once ruled by the famous Pratapaditya before the Mughals expanded their empire. Jessore was this significant cultural and political center that carries traces of ancient capitals, shifting borders, all these battles for power that shaped the region over centuries.

During Partition in 1947, and then again during the 1971 Liberation War, Jessore saw these massive waves of Hindu families leaving their homes, often under the most tragic circumstances you can imagine. Many went to West Bengal and settled in places like Bongaon, while others traveled even further, eventually finding their way to colonies like CR Park here in Delhi. There’s this interesting detail I found out: Jessore was actually the first district in Bangladesh to be liberated in 1971, which gives it this special place in the entire history of our subcontinent.

Standing there yesterday, watching that shobha jatra wind through the streets of CR Park, all of this history suddenly felt so personal and immediate. Seeing people celebrate together, carrying their traditions with such passion and care, it hit me that home isn’t really about geography at all. It’s something we carry inside us, something that somehow survives even when we’re displaced, something that puts down new roots wherever we decide to plant it again.

Watching those Durga Puja festivities in Delhi, in a neighborhood that was literally built by displaced families who refused to let go of who they were, I felt this profound connection. Not just with the community celebrating around me, but with this entire journey of people who had the strength to rebuild their lives and keep their culture alive so far from the land where they were born.

It was a homecoming, really, in a place I had never called home before, but one that somehow felt entirely, completely my own.