Diwali is the festival of lights in India.
Homes and offices, heritage mansions and government buildings glow golden in the dark autumn night, lit up by thousands of lamps and candles and LEDs.
As cars whizz past urban activist Mudar Patherya, shows me the best spot for the best view down the sweeping avenue lined by these grand old buildings in the heart of Kolkata.
MP1: If you ask me, this is the spot you need to stand on. Reason being, from here, you see it almost like a vertical line coming down. You look back and you see the grand sweep of the Telegram Government, Art Deco, 1960. And you've got the Central Telegraph Office, and you've got the Red Letter Office.
On a Sunday night the normally bustling offices are quiet, the streets are empty. Only the buildings, lit up by rows of warm yellow LED, glow like its Diwali.
Except these lights have nothing to do with Diwali. These buildings are part of a Kolkata Illumination Project that wants to change the face of the city by night.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata.
Patherya is the brains behind Kolkata Restorers, a citizen led group. About two years ago he had this idea to restore an old domed market on a busy thoroughfare.
MP2: And that is when the big problem happened that during the day it looked good, in the evening it could not be seen .
That’s when he thought he needed to illuminate it so the dome with its old clock could be seen at night too.
MP3: So, again I had to pass the hat around.
He got it done. With money to spare. So he used that to light up a beautiful temple nearby.
MP4: So, quietly I illuminated that and I completed both projects within the cost of one.
And he caught the lighting bug. He realized Kolkata with its cosmopolitan eclectic heritage, Jewish synagogues, Anglican cathedrals, Greek Orthodox churches, Hindu temples, Bohri mosques was a city that was ready for its closeup. At night. And thus was born the citizen-funded citizen-run Kolkata Illumination Project.
In about 2 years approximately 100 buildings illuminated. He hopes to reach 200.
MP5: I want to get to 200. And if I get to 200, I think this would be one of the most wondrous cities at night in the country. Because the architecture is there.
Its not just illumination, The buildings had to be restored because otherwise the lights would only highlight the peeling paint and cracks. And then he noticed many of these old buildings had clock towers with huge clocks that had not chimed in years.
MP6: And while we were illuminating the buildings, we had also been repairing clock. Repairing clock. Because the moment you illuminate and it shows the wrong time, it is an embarrassment.
Sujoy Sen, who runs the tour company Travel Together Everywhere, read about it in the newspaper. He decided to go check out these buildings for himself and was gobsmacked he tells me over the phone.
SS1: I have seen Paris by night. That Kolkata ekirom hotey paarey
Lit up at night it was a city transformed. Like Paris.
So now Sen runs the first ever Kolkata by night city tour. Usually night tours are about ghosts. But this one is about a city coming alive says Himanjali Sankar who was on the tour.
HS1: I was born and brought up here. My ancestral home is in North Calcutta, and I was familiar with most of the buildings that we saw on the tour. But to see them illuminated so beautifully was magical. It was like they came alive, like they were reclaiming the grandeur that belonged to them.
For almost four hours we roamed around the city many of us called home, learning bits about its its architecture, its legends and its history. Buildings with evocative names like Dead Letter Office for returned Letters
TOUR1: DEAD LETTER
But most of all we learned that sometimes even a city we think we know inside out can surprise us says Indrani Pal as we reached the end of the tour.
IP1: Because we go around in the city (0:36) mostly during the daytime. (0:38) And when we go in the evening also, we really don't notice (0:42) because we are always very busy moving around. Here we only got to focus on the building
We got to see the city in a different light and marvel.
OOOOH WOW
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW. Happy Diwali