Kolkata: Sauntering down a street in Kolkata in the last week of September, it would not be surprising to see Gujarat’s Somnath Temple cheek by jowl with the Golden Temple of Amritsar and the Lotus Temple of Delhi ensconced between the two.
With West Bengal’s biggest festival Durga Puja just a week away, the metropolis is turning into a mini-India.
The golden sprawl of a paddy field in the concrete jungle of the metropolis and replicas of famous temples as also the tribal art meets the eye in pandals.
Local clubs are working day and night to give final touches to their pandals for attracting visitors and the many prizes on offer by companies and organisations.
A sizeable number of the 2000 odd puja pandals in the city are being constructed on themes for which tribal art to gramophone records have been used.
A club in the suburbs have brought two artists from a village in Karnataka’s Shimoga district for depiction of Haasaey folk art there.
Lake Gardens Sarbojanin Durgostav Committee President Manoj Sarkar said, “We are making our pandal with glass bangles and buttons and depicting scenes of ancient Bengal with collages and frames made with these materials.”
The Durga Puja pandal at Lake Gardens in south Kolkata is one of the better known pandals in the city.
While one pandal has used nails, another has made a village well to pay tribute to Prince, the boy who fell into a pit to make headlines and was rescued after two days.
There are some traditionalists too. These puja committees have stuck to bamboo, coloured fabric and traditional clay idols of Goddess Durga along with her sons, Kartik and Ganesh and daughters, Lakshmi and Saraswati.
The asura, the demon, who is killed by the goddess in her Mahisasurmardini avatar, wherein the triumph of good over evil is depicted, is offered puja as per norms.
“We want to stress more on the puja of Maa Durga rather than making it a crowd-puller,” said secretary of New Ballygunge Pragati Sangha, another club in south Kolkata, Tapan Singh.
Colourful light also plays a large role in attracting crowds. The Durga pujas at College Square and Mohammed Ali Park, both in central Kolkata, are using strings of lights to show recent events as well as mythological characters.
Even popular cartoons like Tom and Jerry or Garfield’s antics come alive through lights, becoming hugely popular with children, though the elders too are equally interested.
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