अपना90s
नव्वदचा भारत, अजूनही सुरू
The evening of Ashtami, when the para pandal is at its fullest and nobody is going home early. The goddess lit from below, ten arms and the chaalchitri behind her, marigold everywhere, a dhaki with feathers tied to his drum, and dhunuchi smoke thick enough to lose someone in.
नव्वदचा भारत, अजूनही सुरू
Somewhere around eight the para pandal fills up and stops emptying. The dhak has been going since Shashthi, the goddess is lit from below, and nobody in the queue is in any hurry to get to the front.
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.
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.
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.
