The Hindu Business Line : Sea-change in Puri

THE last time we visited the Orissa seaside resort of Puri was in 1981 when — apart from one old hotel which had by then become a seven-storey monstrosity and a couple of new establishments which had come up on the southern side of the temple town — the town had barely changed its character from what it had always been for decades past.

In the olden days, Puri was where devotees of Lord Jagannath — from all over the country but specially from Bengal — gathered to visit the famous temple, which is more than 700 years old. Today, the strength of the religious attraction remains unaltered, but added to it is the tourist dimension which — as our recent visit to the place proved beyond all doubt — has become the principal lodestone rock of the place.

In fact, the first thing that strikes the eye in Puri today, specially to someone who is visiting it after quite some time, is its development as a tourist centre. In earlier times, the seaside front of the town extended only till the point known as Swargodwar, adjacent to the burning ghat. This correspondent in fact remembers the time more than 20 years ago when, on a summer evening, he saw in the distance a sole funeral pyre burning on the edge of the water, the entire scene, enveloped in darkness as it was, being pregnant with all that Life, Death and Nature signifies. On this visit, there was problem finding the burning ghat in the first place, so hemmed-in has it become by the tourist amenities that are now working overtime to snuff out the life of Puri of yore. Such has been the infrastructural extension of Puri that an entirely new beach road has been built in the recent past, which extends southwards from Swargodwar for a few kilometers, the entire seafront of the road being lined with hotels some of which sport very modern facilities. Between this road and the water's edge, on a small part of the beach, has sprung up a fair ground which, among other things, has catapulted Puri from being a small, old-world and nondescript Indian sea resort — a haven for the middle-class Bengali — to a bustling entertainment and tourist centre catering to the requirements of the higher income groups.

In fact, it was rather surprising to be told that even today, with all its material development, Puri continues to attract tourists mainly from West Bengal and Calcutta, who form more than 90 per cent of the visitors. Not only this, a very substantial part of the investment that has been poured into the resort has also come from Bengal, which suggests that the Bengali (or Bengal) connexion with Puri has become even stronger than before. In a nutshell, it can safely be said that Puri is booming as a tourist resort, specially that part of it that extends southward along the coast. The northern part, generally, still retains its old-world, quite ambience.

Indeed, this difference was always there in the past; today, the divide has become even more pronounced. But, away from the sea, the town probably remains just as it has been for the past century. Barring a few new buildings (and, of course, the changing character of road transport), there has been no appreciable change in the sights and sounds of the temple town, the Jagannath Temple itself being rooted in time where it was in the 19th century and probably earlier.

Summing up, Puri today has become much more accessible to people who are used to material comforts. For the middle-classes, who used to form the bulk of the tourist traffic in past years, it remains what it has always been, namely, a celebration of tourism mixed with religiosity, an amalgam which will always remain the bedrock of a fulfilling holiday for the Indian masses be it a visit to Tirupati or Ganga Sagar.

Ranabir Ray Choudhury