A city that wasn’t mine (until it was)

Kolkata Durga Pujo: a personal journey into devotion, art and the city’s layered soul

23 Sep 2025

What can I write about Calcutta’s Durga Pujo that has not been written before? Perhaps nothing. Maybe that’s the point. Some stories never tire of being told. I have no new perspectives to offer. But across two days, I would reclaim a culture that was always mine. Because you can take the Bengali out of Bengal, but you can never take Bengal out of the Bengali.

CAN YOU EVER ESCAPE CALCUTTA?

I had always consciously distanced myself from Calcutta. I would roll my eyes when people assumed I was from Calcutta. Simply because I’m (half) Bengali. “Bengal has more cities than Calcutta,” I’d snark, in that quintessential Bengali way of getting annoyed at ignorance. The other half of my lineage is Oriya, and the Bengali side of me has zero familial ties to Calcutta. Yet Calcutta insists on inserting itself into lives. There is a reason why this city stays alive in the hearts of even non-Bengalis native to it. Take for instance, Ajay Arya, the Marwari designer from Calcutta who extended this invitation to visit the City of Joy to see the UNESCO-recognised pandals during this year’s Pujo. Ajay’s father Vijay Kumar Arya even started a pujo in Bengaluru in 1980 called Kalasipalyam. Marwaris, Punjabis, Gujaratis, and even the Chinese and Armenians have long woven themselves into Calcutta’s fabric, shaping it as much as belonging to it. In their own way, they show how the city belongs to many, perhaps, in time, even me.

"This year, for me, Pujo began early as I stole these few days before Mahalaya. Not the clang of dhaak or the unveiling of Maa’s eyes on shoshthi but within the near-complete pandals, in scaffolds and stories"

Rajdanga Nabouday Sangha creates a pandal and idol with the theme proshno (question); Photography by Varun Kodolikar

WHEN HERITAGE COMES WITH A TICKET

In 2021, UNESCO declared the city’s Durga Puja an Intangible Cultural Heritage, as a living tradition of art, culture and community. To celebrate this status, to attract tourism and revenue, massArt in partnership with UNESCO curates pre-puja walks at select pandals, opening them up before the rituals begin. A ticketed, comfortable experience of the puja, minus the chaos. I wondered if this commercialisation goes against the sarbojonik ethos of Durga Puja? Yes, and no. But for me, the bigger question was something far more personal: was it right to see Maa before Shoshthi? Her face is only meant to be unveiled only after the sixth day.

Tala Prattoy Durga Puja idol crafted by Bhabatosh Sutar. The theme was Bij Angan; Photography by Varun Kodolikar

The Pratapaditya Road pandal in its 96th year; Photography by Varun Kodolikar

SACRED OR SACRILEGE?

The first pandal I entered seemed to answer me. At Pratapaditya Road, in its 96th year, the theme was Raja Ravi Varma, the painter who scandalised orthodox India by painting our goddesses as flesh and blood. On his canvas, they were innocent, mischievous and recognisably human. Critics called it blasphemy, perhaps the pandits rolled in their graves (or burned in their ashes since we are Hindus). But for millions, it was a revelation and a revolution to make the deity accessible to commoners. So who really decides what is sacred or sacrilege? This pandal was my Raja Ravi Varma moment, to allow devotion and art to overlap.

The theme focused on Raja Ravi Varma's paintings that portrayed goddesses as flesh and blood; Photography by Varun Kodolikar

Byomkesh Bakshi themed pandal at Dum Dum Park Tarun Sangha; Photography by Varun Kodolikar

DEVOTION & DISSENT

The next stop was Samaj Sebi Puja, founded in 1946 by freedom fighters Leela Ray, Sarat Bose, Anil Ray and Meghnad Saha. In the current year, its visual theme was Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, and the concept harks back to the riots of 1946 in Calcutta, coming full circle on its 80th anniversary. The locale has been the backdrop for political gatherings and student movements during the Independence movement. To situate a puja here in 1946, as the country was on the cusp of Independence, the city witnessed devotion becoming the act of nation-building and resilience. That resilience carries into the present too, as one local quipped, “On a normal day, people fight if a car blocks their gate. For Pujo, the gates can be blocked for months and no one minds.” And in true Calcutta spirit, my favourite detail was a metaphor where journalism was embedded into craft — a newspaper article recreated in hand-embroidered fabric panels. So very Calcutta!

Idol at Dum Dum Park Bharat Chakra; Photography by Varun Kodolikar

A short walk away is the Ballygunge Cultural Association where Maa glowed like a queen in zardosi. As we got closer, we realised that there was no fabric, but she was sculpted in mud. Her arms shimmered in rose gold, indicating sheer zari sleeves. I could not get a photograph since the pandal was unfinished. “The lights are not set up yet,” someone shouted in the background as we tried to get a picture. I stepped back and noticed that this incompleteness was its own kind of beauty. Even our last pandal, the Samaj Sebi Puja, was a work in progress. Scaffoldings holding up installations, cranes working endlessly to fix them in place. There is something haunting in half-completion. Incompleteness forces you to pause, to fill the gaps with your own imagination. I experienced devotion not in the grandeur of spectacle, but in the quiet anticipation of what was yet to come. I studied details and reimagined them as renderings that were just mine, fleeting and personal, never to be replicated once completion set in. It dawned on me that completion erases mystery, incompleteness lingers as memory.

And to see artisans fussing over Maa lovingly was experiencing devotion in a new light. She glowed more radiant when the lights were dim and her presence felt a tad stronger through the scaffoldings. I was told some craftsmen never return once the idol is complete; the grief of completion is too heavy. Once finished, the countdown to immersion begins.

At the pandal on Pratapaditya Road; Photography by Varun Kodolikar

An enactment of the Sindoor Khela ritual where married Bengali women apply sindoor to the forehead and feet of the Goddess Durga idol on the last day of Durga Puja, Bijoya Dashami; Photography by Varun Kodolikar

It is ironic that I am talking about endings on Mahalaya, as I write this story. Today is the day of new beginnings and celebrations with devi paksh, but it is also the day that marks the end of pitru paksh (mourning). Myth tells us that this is when Durga descends to battle Mahishasura. But in the Bengali household, she is Uma, the daughter visiting her mother’s home from Kailash with the children — Lakshmi, Saraswati, Kartik and Ganesh. That duality of a fierce warrior and a tender daughter is mirrored in the pandals. Some celebrate beauty, love, and joy, like the ones at the Raja Ravi Varma themed pandal. Others, like the Pather Panchali pandal at Samaj Sebi, hold up the realities of hardship, loss and resilience. It is the dawn when Kalparambha will mark the onset of Pujo across the world. My mind specifically goes to the Khelat Bhavan in North Calcutta which was part of an experience conceptualised by Kolkata Unforgettable. At the mansion built in 1846, Durga Puja has been celebrated continuously since 1855, and was visited by Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa in 1881. There, at their baari, through lucid narration and Odissi performances, we were taken through all eleven days of Pujo, from Mahalaya to Dashami. The sensitive retelling was not ritual being enacted (I did fear trivialisation and over-simplification) but it was storytelling in a new format, but with respect and reverence.

This year, for me, Pujo began early as I stole these few days before Mahalaya. Not the clang of dhaak or the unveiling of Maa’s eyes on shoshthi but within the near-complete pandals, in scaffolds and stories. As my photographer Varun Kodolikar quipped, “Every pandal is a coffee bean for the next, you’re already inhaling it while reaching for the next.” It was the perfect metaphor for the city’s rhythm during Pujo: addictive, aromatic and fleeting.

Your goddess may be Durga descending to defeat Mahishasura or Maa coming home to her mother. Your devotion may lie in silence as much as it lies in spectacle. Because no singular belief defines Hindu faith, the Sanatan Dharma and the ways to practice it, as art or even atheism. The essence of our worship is plurality. And in that plurality, Pujo always finds a way to begin, no matter when you arrive.