The pandal is the address for four days

A Kolkata pandal is built out of bamboo and cloth on a patch of road that is a patch of road for the rest of the year, and for four days it becomes the place everybody in the neighbourhood is. Not visits. Is. You go in the morning for anjali, you go back in the evening because where else, and you go again at eleven because your cousins turned up.

Inside, the goddess on her platform with ten arms and the chaalchitri arc behind her, made in Kumartuli out of clay off the riverbank and painted in the same style your grandmother would recognise. Lakshmi and Saraswati on one side, Kartik and Ganesha on the other. Marigold on everything. A heap of red hibiscus at her feet.

Ashtami is the evening it peaks

Sandhi puja falls at the join between Ashtami and Navami and the whole pandal goes quiet for it, which is the only time in four days it does. Everything either side of that is noise. The dhaki with white feathers tied to his drum, playing standing up, leaning back into it. Someone doing dhunuchi with a smoking clay pot in each hand and occasionally one in their teeth, and a ring of people who came to watch for a minute and are still there.

This is also the night the new clothes come out. Not the first set, the good set, the one that was bought for exactly this evening and has been waiting in a bag since August.

And then pandal hopping, until the feet give out

Thakur dekha, literally going to see the gods, practically walking half of north Kolkata at night with a family group that keeps losing two people. One pandal is a temple, the next one is a spaceship, the next one is somebody who spent a year making the whole thing out of terracotta pots. You queue, you shuffle past, you say it was better last year, you go to the next one.

In 2026 the puja days run from 17 to 21 October, with Ashtami on the 19th. Mahalaya, the four in the morning radio broadcast that starts the countdown, falls on 10 October.

Questions people ask

What is Ashtami Sondhya?

A neighbourhood Durga Puja pandal in Kolkata on the evening of Ashtami, the biggest night of the four. The idol lit up, the dhak going, dhunuchi smoke, and the whole para out on the street. Free, in your browser, nothing to sign up for.

What is playing?

Dhak, and the agomoni songs that welcome Durga home, in the old recordings rather than the newer remakes. Mahishasuramardini turns up too, because it does in every pandal.

What is a pandal?

A temporary structure built out of bamboo and cloth to house the idol for the four days of the puja. Neighbourhood committees compete on them, and in Kolkata some of them are genuinely enormous pieces of design that get taken down a week later.

What is the dhunuchi dance?

Dancing in front of the goddess holding burning clay pots of coconut husk and incense, usually to the dhak. It is not choreographed and it is not meant to be. The smoke is the point.

When is Durga Puja in 2026?

The main days run from 17 to 21 October 2026. Ashtami, the evening this theme is set on, is Monday 19 October. Mahalaya falls earlier, on 10 October.

Are there other themes?

A Doordarshan Sunday drawing room, a barber shop, a night bus stand in Maharashtra and a school ground on the fifteenth of August. Move between them from the picker on the left.