Sculpting the Sacred

From the potters’ quarters of Kumartuli to Kolkata’s neon-lit pandals, the Durga Pooja remains Bengal’s greatest pageant and a reminder that divinity is endlessly remoulded by time and tradition.

Durga Pooja is the biggest, the loudest and the most colourful festival among Bengalis across the world. The soft-hued golden light of the sun in September reminds us that the Goddess is about to arrive from Kailash with her four children to visit her mother’s home – mother earth. She stays here for five days and leaves on Bijoya Dashami or Dassera. Durga Pooja coincides with the harvest season. The sun begins to shed its cow dust rays on earth and it is time for celebrations. Her devotees light up the world with lights, music, and decoration and dress themselves in shimmering new clothes every day on the five days of the festival. Pandals put up in every street corner in Kolkata vie with each other to bag trophies for the best concept, the best execution, for a pollution-free and smoke-free pandal and so on. Some bring Japan to earth and the Goddess along with her children is turned into a Japanese goddess and her Japanese children.

Durga, consort of Shiva is the embodiment of Shakti, of the triumph of good over evil, of strength over weakness, of creation over destruction. The legend of Durga claims that Sakti, though neutral in its primal sense, can assume ambivalent forms, each complete unto itself, ranging from the world-mother who bestows infinite compassion to her destructive manifestations.

On Chaitra Sankranti, the last day of the Bengali year, the 527 families and 300-and odd artisans who, by heredity, are marked out as idol sculptors of Kumartuli, perform a ritual pooja before they put their hands to dry bamboo sticks to form the first skeleton framework of the first Durga that will come out of the workshed before the Poojas. Kumartuli is the largest hub for Durga idols in Kolkata with about 3000 idols made for home and abroad. The smell of wet clay from Ganges and other rivers, the dry crackling of straw beneath your feet, the criss-cross patterns of bamboo spread out within the narrow confines of a ramshackle, eight-by-eight studio blend seamlessly to create the traditional homes of the artisans where Goddess Durga takes ‘birth.’ The name “Kumortuli” is derived from the original Bengali word ‘kumore’ derived from the purer word kumbhakaar, standing for artisans who work with metals to make vessels and utensils. Over time, it has corrupted itself to Kumartuli. “Tuli” is a Bengali word that roughly translates as ‘a small space’ or ‘place’ where the potters stay. The name ‘Kumartuli’ was coined like this.

The artisans claim their descent from people who made images of Durga for Maharaja Krishna Chandra of Krishnanagar. Some historians opine that the ancestors of the artisans were potters who had drifted in during the days of the Raj but the power of legend still overwhelms the ordinary visitor. Another story says that it was Raja Nabakrishna Deb who brought the Pals to Calcutta. He wanted to celebrate Durga Pooja in honour of the British victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. He is said to have summoned a young Pal family member from Krishnanagar to make the clay image for his pooja. Eventually several other well-to-do families wanted to follow the Raja’s example. Soon, the Pals were inundated with work. But as these artisans had to travel from Krishnanagar, they asked for permanent residence. Their wish was granted. Kumartuli was established in the north of Calcutta as a centre for clay art.

Modernization and innovation have brought about radical changes in the Durga idol’s form and shape. Durga idols in Kolkata are made of coins, coconut fibre, plastic, Plaster-of-Pais, copper, wire, wood, cement and steel, glass, sand, mosaic tiles, beads, machine parts and mundane other materials such as papier mache. But in these cases, the idol that is worshipped is the traditional Durga in a small form with her four children alongside.

An interesting ritual mandatory for the artisan is that he has to collect earth from homes of people of different walks of life. One fistful of earth must be from the door of a prostitute’s house. Another rule the artisans follow is the whole family sits in front of the half-finished idol to pray the whole night before they paint in the eyes the next morning. They believe that the goddess comes to life the minute the eyes are painted. The prayer is to appeal for forgiveness from the Goddess for having the ‘audacity’ to ‘gift’ her with eyes.

During Durga Pooja the entire state in West Bengal and Bengali neighbourhoods in other Indian cities come alive as if with the touch of an invisible magic wand. Strung across every street, lane and road are colourful buntings, banners, paper streamers and floral decorations with loudspeakers put up in every corner playing loud songs from Hindi and Bengali films. There are at least four collective Pooja mandaps along every street, blocking vehicular traffic for all five days of the festival. Serpentine queues are witnessed daily. Drummers or dhakis as they are called, walk in with their massive drums decorated with coloured feathers, playing on their drums to celebrate the sanctity of this holy festival. The air is rich with the fragrance of dhoop, incense sticks, flowers and sandalwood.

The story goes that the Goddess is immersed in the Ganges on the last day because she can go back to Kailash only along a watery route. It is the Arabian Sea in Mumbai, the Thames River in London, the Rheine in Germany and the Seine in Paris. Another story is that since the Goddess is shaped out of clay from the Ganges, she should go back to the Ganges.

(The author is a noted film scholar, culture critic and a double-winner for the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema. Views personal.)