Size mattered in the earliest stages. This is why Simla Byayam Samiti’s 21-foot Durga in 1939 or the gigantic image in Santipur much earlier (mentioned in Chapter IV) found pride of place in contemporary chronicles.

As Kumortuli started experimenting with form, there were new variations in representations of the goddess and the context in which she was placed. If Bharatmata emerged out of popular nationalist sentiments, the separation of the images, breaking up the ekchala pattern, was a signature of Gopeshwar Pal, who was called upon to create a difference by the organisers. Once these variations had been accepted, others gained the courage and the freedom to think differently. The changes flowed in parallel streams. While master image makers like Ramesh Pal, Gorachand Pal, Rakhal Pal and Mohanbanshi Rudrapal gave birth to distinct schools of representation, lesser-known artisans tried their hand at novelties, or even gimmicks, that faded after their four days of fame. (In 1994, for instance, the Goddess hitched a ride on the Jurassic Park bandwagon, with a dinosaur appearing beside the lion in the tableau of a puja in Behala, a suburb in Calcutta’s extreme south. Priests were aghast at what they called a distortion of Hindu religious mythography. But the organisers, delighted at the long queues of the curious, could not have cared less.)

The major focus of the experiments was obviously on the goddess and her entourage. But from the 1980s onwards, a shift was noticeable towards lighting and illumination effects.

A look at the escalating figures in a prominent central Calcutta puja’s budget for lighting (done by SD Electricals, headed by illumination wizard Sridhar Das of suburban Chandannagore. the Kumortuli of lighting6) tells the story.

1962 — Rs 2,300
1970 — Rs 5,000
1980 — Rs 45,000
mid-1990s — Rs 1.5 lakh

The state of West Bengal, afflicted by long hours of power cuts round the year, had always been splendidly lit up on the puja nights. With a greater share of the budget being allocated to lighting, the illuminations took on a narrative or tableau-like function. Tiny light-bulbs, called tuni-bati in Bengali, were used to illustrate (through pictorial designs) tuneless themes like the seasons, the crafts of Bengal, eminent persons, or even contemporary events. Thus the Miss Universe pageant or the terrorist assault on the World Trade Center—everything was staple for the electricians who worked wonders with their tiny lights, often adding moral messages or warnings for their admiring spectators.

After lights, it was the turn of the pandals to take centre stage. In their earliest incarnation, these temporary street- corner shrines would have been a bare framework of bamboo poles draped in cloth spread over tarpaulin. But gradually innovative pandals emerged. Santosh Mitra Square in central Calcutta earned a name for itself by springing extraordinary surprises every year. In 1996, on Netaji’s birth centenary, the ship in which, the organisers believe, lie had set sail for Japan, was recreated at the park which was its address. “The police had to make special security arrangements, such was the turn-out,” recounts an organiser. The next year, cloth and woodwork recreated a recent accident in which a part of a long-distance train fell off a bridge, killing scores of passengers. In Salt Lake, a relatively new and less populated satellite township, huge crowds queued daily to see the S.S.

Titanic recreated as a pandal in 1998, the very next year after James Cameron’s film Titanic swept the Oscars.

Similar wonders, rising to heights of 60 to 70 feet, began to be created in other corners of the city It was easy to find Washington’s White House, Rome’s Fountain of Trevi, Kathmandu’s Pashupati Nath temple and Agra’s Taj Mahal at a stone’s throw from each other, all crafted by decorators who had never stepped out of Bengal and had only photographs in magazines or books to guide them. What was most amazing about these illusionistic masterpieces was that they simulated the appearance of marble and stone with nothing more than cloth, bamboo and cardboard. Experiments would be (and still are) carried out in unusual media, such as soap, medicine bottles, clay cups, old bakelite record discs, biscuits and red chilli, but the 1 960s and 1970s fad of creating the images themselves out of these unusual substances seems to have passed. The deity is now left well alone, to be modelled in the traditional clay, while the pandal provides the space where novel ideas take shape.

From the mid-90s, one might note a concerted effort to weave all aspects of the puja into a harmonious whole. The resulting creation would deliver a message, tell a story or recreate a way of life. This is what is called theme-based puja or, in common parlance, theme puja.

Thus when an organiser in Dhakuria, south Calcutta, chooses a ‘kathakali dance village’ for a theme, the local park becomes a corner of Kerala complete with its backwaters, palm trees and a couple of live ducks swimming in the canal, dug out just for the festival. Mud huts are constructed where kathakali dancers put on their elaborate make-up in full view of the visitors before ascending the stage at one side of the pandal for performances. Craftsmen sit and design Keralan handicrafts, to be sold to interested visitors. Even the images of the deities are in kathakali costume. Zonal lighting is used, under the guidance of a theatre professional, to create the look of a sleepy village, lulled by recordings of the drone of crickets and the croaking of frogs played on concealed amplifiers. The research for this puja took about two months, including a trip to Kerala, says the puja committee president.

A film studio can be recreated in an alley in Barisha, Behala. The entrance is lined with posters and negatives of still shots of Indian films which have used Durga Puja— from the black and white Pather Panchali and Nayak to the technicolour Devdas and Utsab. The passage leads to the studio floor where elaborate shooting equipment is mounted in front of the goddess—movie camera, reflectors, multi- 10 lights... The inner walls of the pandal are lined with sound-absorbing grass boards. A screen displays the puja centred sequences from the films. During anjali (offerings) or aarati (greeting of the goddess), the ritual is shot on camera and the footage shown later in the day on the pandal projector.

Some of the most remarkable theme pujas are conceived as works of art. The organisers of the Bakul Bagan Road puja in Bhowanipore, south Calcutta, have established a tradition of requesting some of the most famous living artists of Bengal to create the image of the goddess, in a chosen setting, each year. Memorable creations were produced by the late Meera Mukherjee, one of the greatest of modern sculptors, and even by Isa Mohammad, a Muslim who was then principal of the Government Art College.

Art and craft of a particular region—terracotta panels or lac dolls, dokra figurines or Madhubani paintings—come tip as motif of an entire puja complex, bringing artists from remote corners into the limelight and giving encouragement to the craftsmen and their art form.

Clearly, such planning is beyond the capability of the pandal-decorator, the image-maker or the electrician. This is where the theme-maker has come in. This is a person who formulates the ideas, instructs the artisans and oversees the work. While many people with a creative bent of mind but coming from unrelated professional backgrounds take to theme-making during the pujas, art directors of films and art college graduates are also becoming involved with the pujas in large numbers. For both groups, it is a job on the side, not as yet their principal profession. But it is a task that shapes the look of a particular puja and decides its fate on the popularity scales and the awards lists.

Consumer carnival

Durga Puja is the biggest business event on the calendar in Bengal. Money in multiples of millions changes hands as people save up through the year to indulge themselves during this period. It is a tradition for employers to make bonus payments before the Puja as a goodwill gesture to employees. For the West Bengal government alone, the annual payment in bonus and festival advance adds up to Rs 70 crore.

Shopping has always been an integral part of the puja. Garments to gadgets, cars to jewellery, no product is denied the benison of the buyer. ORG-Marg, a leading market research company, pegs consumer spending estimates in the city in two months of the festival period at over Rs 350 crore.

Earlier, people would even travel to the city from the suburbs at this time of the year to pick up the fashionable best for their family and friends. In 1927, the Eastern Bengal Railway ran a train called Pujo Bazaar Special for a month before the festival, that reached a variety of ware from the city- clothes, cosmetics, culinary utensils and the like—to consumers in remote areas. From August 31 to October 1, the train with three compartments travelled 1,124 ¼ miles, stopping at 20 stations (often for days, depending on the response) on the way. The average daily turnout at each station was 5,000 and articles worth more than Rs 1 lakh were sold.

The shopping festival that is the Puja has spawned an entire genre of products, called Puja specials. After all, it is common commercial sense to push a commodity when the consumer has the money and is in the mood to splurge. New music albums are released during this time, as are special numbers of magazines.

Puja has its own brand of music called agamani that heralds the home-coming of the daughter of the Himalayas. These songs could be heard from itinerant troubadours in villages with the approach of Mahalaya. But the festival was used as an occasion to launch an album for the first time in September 1914. The artiste who gave voice to two kirtans on the two sides of the first Gramophone Company of India Puja album was Manada Sundari Dassi. That year, 17 records, each costing three rupees and 12 annas, were released.

Soon it became common practice for music companies to target all their major releases around this time. Booklets were distributed from music stores, containing photographs of the artistes and lyrics of the new songs, which would also be broadcast on the radio. Countless evergreen hits, like Hemanta Mukherjee’s Runner, Gnayer Badhu and Palkir Gaan, were originally part of the Puja bouquet of the respective years. With the exit of the great names in Bengali music, the quality of original songs released on the occasion has gone down, though the number of releases has multiplied manifold. Technology has made cutting an album an easier and cheaper proposition. Such is the opportunistic lure of the moment that many small recording companies now spring to life during the Pujas to bring out a few albums and sink into oblivion immediately afterwards. “Sales in the festive season are still far higher than at any point of time round the year but the new songs are not awaited with as much eagerness as they were till the 1970s,” points out S.F. Karim, business manager of Saregama India Ltd, which has taken over the monolithic HMV label from the Gramophone Company of India.

If the music does not generate as much excitement as before, Puja literature remains high on popularity stakes. In fact, the Puja-special magazines have become as integral to the occasion as new clothes are, rapidly increasing in circulation ever since Anandabazar Patrika brought out a separate magazine, priced at two annas, in 1926. Earlier, a few extra pages in journals, containing stories or novels, designated as Puja literature, were all that there was. But once the start was made, in the next two decades other magazines and newspapers—Desk, Dainik Basumati, Jugantar and Hindusthan—came out with Puja magazines featuring a feast of stories and poems and essays, commissioned specially for the occasion. A pointer to the popularity is the sharp rise in the number of pages and the price ofAnandabcziarR2trlka’s puja edition. By 1935, it was a 284-page book, carrying a price tag of eight annas. Today there are Puja specials to suit every pocket and preference, including a few in English to cater to the huge non-Bengali population iii the city which soaks in the Puja spirit as well.

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