Spirits are hovering in India’s “Metropolis of Pleasure” as tens of 1000’s of individuals jostle on Kolkata’s streets in celebration of Durga Puja, an important pageant of the Bengali group.
The five-day pageant that started on Saturday is marked by prayers to the Hindu goddess Durga, feasts, rejoicing, music, dance and drama marking the victory of fine over evil. Individuals go to richly illuminated and adorned group centres with idols of Durga and different goddesses worshipped by the Bengali group.
This yr’s Durga Puja in West Bengal state in japanese India comes after two years of pandemic curbs on massive gatherings and follows UNESCO’s recognition in December of Kolkata’s pageant as a part of the United Nations’ Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity programme.
Artists started getting ready for the pageant months in the past by making 1000’s of clay idols in Kumortuli, the oldest potters’ colony in Kolkata.
The artwork district has mushroomed in an unplanned approach in congested slender alleys and lanes on the japanese financial institution of the Hooghly River. Studios dot the world with no concrete building or correct doorways. The artists use the area as their home-cum-studios with widespread amenities.
With their work rising in reputation, the artisans have launched fibreglass idols and export miniature idols of Durga to the UK, the US, Japan, Bahrain and different international locations.
The work begins with a skeleton of bamboo and wooden, which the artist methodically binds with paddy straw to offer it a human form. The artist then locations clay over the human-shaped dolls.
The faces of the idols are moulded and even handcrafted. The clay is collected from the Hooghly River and combined with small hay items and wooden mud collected from sawmills. The artists paint the idols in colors chosen by their clients.
Kolkata was nicknamed the Metropolis of Pleasure after a 1985 novel by Dominique Lapierre with the identical title that was tailored as a movie by Roland Joffé in 1992. The theme centred on individuals’s joyous spirits overcoming hardships.
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