Kolkata is getting ready for the city's biggest festival, Durga Puja. Idols are being built in the ancient potters workshops of Kumartuli, pandals are coming up everywhere, and people are busy planning their puja wardrobe.
This year, the events will be even more special. A team from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will be in Kolkata accepted an invitation from the Mamata Banerjee-government to participate in pre-Durga Puja celebration scheduled on September 1. The director and UNESCO representative to India, Bhutan, the Maldives and Sri Lanka - Eric Falt - has sent a letter to the state’s chief secretary confirming participation. “In recognition of the unique and important relationship between West Bengal and our organization, the Director General is pleased to direct the participation of myself and Tim Curtis, secretary of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Thus, I take this opportunity to confirm our joint participation in the celebration,” Falt wrote in the letter.
Recognising the festival's distinct character, UNESCO inscribed Durga Puja in Kolkata on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The announcement was made by the Intergovernmental Committee of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention on Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage during its 16th session at Paris, France.
In Kolkata, Durga Puja is not just a religious event; it resembles a carnival with jaw-dropping public art installations cropping up all across the city. Lakhs of artists, crafts people and workers put together this wondrous show every year. For one week, Kolkata gets transformed into a huge public art gallery with thousands of pandals—the temporary structures housing the goddess—popping up on streets. These structures have extravagant themes and artworks. Vehicles and people weave in and out, interacting with these amazing pop-up structures all around them. You can think of the pandals as giant art installations, and ‘pandal-hopping’ as a gigantic public gallery crawl.
If you haven't been, it may be a good idea to visit the City of Joy during Durga Puja. Read more about it here.
