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Durga is Calling

The sound of rainwater being collected in pots and pans and buckets.

WATER1

Songs from the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans home to tigers and crocodiles.

BONBIBI

Articles 14 and 15 of the Indian Constitution promising the rights to equality and liberty.

CONSTITUTION

What do all these have in common? Not much except this week if you come to Kolkata they are all themes of Durga Puja
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata.
Durga Puja is the biggest festival in these parts. This is when we celebrate the 10 armed Goddess Durga coming home after vanquishing forces of evil.
At the old Daw mansion in north Kolkata, they are getting ready for the 165th edition of the festival. Fans whirr loudly while someone washes the glass chandelier and the artists paint the images. Dipten Daw says his grandfather’s grandfather started this.

DAW1: Dadur babar baba. Aami hochi fifth genration

In 5 generations nothing has changed. The image looks exactly the same every year. But outside these old houses the clubs that organise the hundreds of Durga Pujas that happen in parks and street corners all over the city are always looking for the next new thing.
Durga Puja is now on the list of Unesco’s intangible cultural heritage. Since then an arts organisation called Mass Art does a preview of about two dozen Durga Pujas every year.
Organisers are outdoing each other to be more artistic, more socially relevant, more wow.
That brings us to the falling water in AK Block of Kolkata’s Salt Lake City. Swarnabha Dey who helped the artist Bhabatosh Sutar on the project says the theme is A Drop of Water. The pots collecting all the water remind us that rainwater isn’t soaking into the ground like it once did.

SD1:  Jol water source jotota matter niche jawaoar kotha jaahce. Maati pacchey na.

The Goddess and her family are dwarfed by the statue of a little girl with braids, her empty hands upturned as if collecting the last drops of water.
Water shortage, constitutional rights, climate change, overdevelopment in fragile mountains. Urgent issues all, vitally important, but are they the right fit for a five day festival of eat-pray-love? Swarnabha Dey says where else will an artist get such a massive art space, such a platform to reach so many people.

SD2: durga puja is a massive art space, hug e platform, eita, freedom peyechi.

It’s social messaging through popular art. At the Durga Puja in Arjunpur performers pop up from behind windows behind sculpture of the Goddess and do street theatre.

SKIT1

It takes a minute for the visitors to realize they got a civics lesson in the right to equality in the guise of entertainment. And the backdrop of the goddess is a giant hardbound copy of the Indian Constitution.
In Naktala the Goddess is holding not weapons in her 10 hands but a giant pot of boiling water.

RICE COOKING

That’s rice cooking says club member Saon Das. Reminding us of time when the whole family ate together.

SAON1: Idol holding Pot of rice.. that is cooking, waiting for meal.
SAON2: In olden days we used to have our meals together. Now not happening. We are going away from our culture

Now the installations shows a mobile phone on every dinner plate. Scooters made of wire are parked everywhere waiting to deliver the next order. Maybe to Saon himself.

SAON3: They are ordering online. Don’t you? Sure, why not. Some days

Whether celebration, protest or nostalgia, each installation has its own theme, its own style and in a way its own frequency. Artist Sushanta Pal has done one installation for Kendua Shanti Sangha that literally hums to its own frequency

HUM1

The Goddess seems to float in a dark chamber, filled with with a mesh of metal and pin pricks of light. Pal says we come to these Durga Pujas to connect with the goddess. But like a radio listener we need to tune to her frequency. Only then can we lose ourselves in her resonance. I am just trying to hold on to that frequency says Pal.

PAL1:  Frequency niye kaaj korchi. Visual representation of that frequency

I like that idea. In a city chaotic with light and noise, the Goddess has come home and is calling out to us. Now if we could just cut through the static and be on the same wavelength.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW