Hello Readers,
From where I belong, we celebrate a grand festival here which comes every year around September- October month called the Durga Puja festival. It is being celebrated for 5 official days but nowadays people even start celebrating 3-4 days before the main celebration, because it is the biggest festival of the year, where we celebrate the arrival of Goddess Durga. In Hindu mythology, Maa (mother) Durga is the Goddess of Power and arrived in an ancient time at Earth to punish Ashuras (demons).
Anyway, this Puja is being celebrated across the State, especially in the City of Kolkata, where Pandals (temporary structures) are made around every Durga Puja spread across the city and state where there will be a Unique theme on each pandal representing something cool. The Pandals can be giant or medium size at least where hundreds of people can enter and enjoy watching the artworks and aesthetic structures. There are big and famous Pandals spending Hundreds of Thousands of USD and there are also those with much smaller budgets but standing out with their most unique ideas or strong social Messages. So in this post, I will be sharing my experience where I visited both the city and in also in town and sub-urban areas myself and experienced some of the coolest Durga Puja Pandals with photos which I have clicked with my phone. So, if you are interested, let us begin without any further ado.
Mother Durga is the Goddess of Power and she is one of the most powerful entities in Hindu Mythology. So every year to celebrate her arrival, Everyone here buys new clothes and gadgets, many Office workers receive a bonus at this time, school, college and all offices are also closed around at least 5 - 15 days and when the main celebration comes, people get out of their homes wearing their finest apparels and join the celebration by visiting as many pandals as they can. The journey sometimes can go all night and around this time, Traffic becomes the most painful thing to experience, especially if you are roaming at city side. In all the pandals, there will be a portrait of Mother Durga along with their 4 children, like the one I shared above. They are all made unique and different and experienced artists work behind many famous and big pandals to showcase their art to all the people.
In the picture above, you can see a shot that I took keeping the Durga Mother’s Sculpture at the middle and also taking the front side of the Pandal. The implementation of lights also plays an important role here. Different kinds of illumination, from LED and Neon to Halogen and Flood Light are used as required to make it more glamorous and visibly attractive. In this one, there was an open pandal and the theme was old and almost obsolete Transportation system Hand Karts and Paddle Rickshaw and was an open type Pandal.
The next Pandal as you can clearly see is inspired by the Fairyland theme and I took this shot from a far distance and the actual Pandal is much larger, where we would have to lass inside of it and visit the mother Durga’s sculpture. The Pandas was really large yet heavily detailed and there was also a good light work distributed around the whole pandal with different modes. When I took the picture, all the lights were blinking together around that time, which caused me to capture this colourful photo.
Now here in this picture above, you can the the artistic work on the ceiling of a pandal where different types of stairs, balconies etc are being represented and the centre holding a detailed created decorated piece. The light combination of Red, White and Light Wood was visually very attractive and the lights were also only supporting and enriching the main 2 colours of this theme.
Now moving on, in this image above, you can see an artistic sculpture which was placed at the front of a Pandal and I really liked the artistic work here representing Nature and Energy. In this picture, the play of colours focused on Blue, Green and Gold which I think maybe represent Earth, Water and Fire. I took this photo from just above the ground level to capture both the statue placed at the ground and the ceiling above to capture the whole visual.