Pandal hopping from CR Park to Kolkata: A tale of Durga Puja across states

In CR Park, I guide friends through Durga Puja pandals I didn't grow up with. In Kolkata, pandals swallowed me whole.

Copy Link Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email WhatsApp Advertising In Delhi, I am often the person leading the way. I take friends through pandals I did not grow up visiting, explaining the rituals, the history of how Bengalis came to settle in the city, with something that is almost incantation. My fourth Durga Puja in the city is impending. And yet the last time I was in CR Park, a singular neighbourhood, my Bengali friends and I were jarred by yet another jewellery shop and ghugni stall we’d never seen. I have become a guide to a culture I am still discovering.

In Kolkata, growing up, I was the one being led: by friends, friends of friends, family, flings, neighbours who were near strangers the rest of the year. And we would scarcely know what to expect from the pandal, except Maa. On the way, we’d encounter traffic snags and hop over fences, powered by vodka shots in phuchka shells. Neon lights become a haze in long, headache-inducing yellow taxi rides. I suppose that’s one of the greatest differences between pandal hopping in the capital and the ex-capital as a Bengali. You tell grand, nostalgic stories in one and hope the food will further convey them; in the other, you graduate immediately to a postmodernist movement with a stream of consciousness.