The Morning the Radio Woke Up Bengal

Every year, at around four in the morning, a deep voice rises out of old radio sets and phone speakers across Bengal and begins chanting verses from the Chandi. Half the city is still asleep, and the other half is sitting in the dark with a cup of tea, pretending they’re not emotional about it.

That’s Mahalaya. For many Bengalis, Durga Puja doesn’t begin with pandals or new clothes. It begins here.

The voice behind the morning

The programme is Mahishasuramardini, and the voice belongs to Birendra Krishna Bhadra. All India Radio has been broadcasting it since the early 1930s, and the recorded version most of us know is from the 1960s. Here’s a story people love to tell: in 1976, the station tried replacing it with a new version starring Uttam Kumar, the biggest matinee idol Bengal ever had. Listeners were furious, the complaints poured in, and the old recording came back. A star couldn’t replace a ritual.

What Mahalaya actually marks

Two things happen on this day, and people often only remember one.

First, it ends Pitru Paksha, the fortnight for remembering ancestors. On the ghats of the Ganga, people stand knee-deep in water offering tarpan to their dead. There’s a lovely old story behind the fortnight. When Karna, the warrior of the Mahabharata, died, he found that his heavenly meals were all gold. He had given away so much gold in life and never fed his ancestors. Yama sent him back for fifteen days to put that right, and that’s the origin of Pitru Paksha.

Second, it opens Devi Paksha, the fortnight when the goddess is called down.

The goddess made of everyone’s anger

The myth comes from the Devi Mahatmya, part of the Markandeya Purana. The buffalo demon Mahishasura had won a boon that no man could kill him, so he thought himself untouchable and drove the gods out of heaven.

The gods went to Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Their anger gathered into a blaze of light, and that light became a woman. Then every god gave her something of their own: Shiva his trident, Vishnu his discus, Indra his thunderbolt, and the Himalayas gave her a lion to ride. She wasn’t a deity one god made for the others. She was all of them, combined.

On Mahalaya, tradition says, the artisans paint the eyes of the idol. It’s called Chokkhu Daan, the gifting of sight. The eyes are the last thing painted, because that’s the moment the clay stops being clay.

A goddess worshipped at the wrong time

This is my favourite oddity. Durga was traditionally worshipped in spring. The autumn puja is called Akal Bodhan, the untimely awakening, and the reason goes back to Rama.

In the Bengali Ramayana of Krittivasa, written in the 15th century, Rama is about to fight Ravana and needs the goddess on his side. But it’s autumn, and the gods are asleep, so he wakes her out of season. He vows to offer 108 blue lotuses and finds that one is missing. Rather than break the vow, he decides to offer his own eye, since people call his eyes lotus-like. As he raises the blade, the goddess appears and stops him. That’s why Bengal celebrates Durga in autumn, and why the puja carries a whiff of rebellion against the calendar.

Rare bits worth knowing

The mud. The idols of Kumartuli are made with Ganga clay, and tradition requires a handful of soil from a prostitute’s doorstep, nishiddho palli. The belief is that a man leaves his virtue at the threshold, so the earth there becomes sacred. It’s a quiet reminder that the goddess belongs to people society pushes out.

Kola Bou. The “banana bride” next to Ganesha isn’t a wife. It’s a bundle of nine plants, the Navapatrika, bound together and dressed in a sari. It stands for the goddess in her form as nature itself.

Sandhi Puja. For the 48 minutes at the junction of Ashtami and Navami, 108 lamps are lit. This marks the moment Durga killed the demons Chanda and Munda, and the drums go wild.

The twelve friends. The community puja you know today began in 1790 in Guptipara, Hooghly, when twelve friends pooled money because they couldn’t afford a puja alone. That’s where barowari, “twelve friends”, comes from. The word still lives in sarbojanin, puja for everyone.

The recognition. UNESCO added Durga Puja to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2021. Kumartuli: the lane where the goddess is born

If Mahalaya is the phone call, Kumartuli is where she gets her face. It’s a cramped neighbourhood in north Kolkata, near the Ganga, where the lanes are so narrow that half-finished goddesses lean out of workshops and watch you walk by. Kumor means potter, and that’s the whole story of the name.

How it began. The usual account is that potters from Krishnanagar in Nadia district were brought to Kolkata in the 18th century to serve the wealthy families of Sovabazar and the old north Kolkata households. Those families wanted grand idols for their courtyard pujas, and the potters stayed, settled by the river, and built a neighbourhood around the craft. Some tellings link this to the Sovabazar Rajbari puja of 1757, famously tied to Raja Nabakrishna Deb and the British after Plassey. Historians debate the details, so tell it as a story people tell.

The building of an idol. It starts with a frame of bamboo and straw, tied with jute rope. Then come layers of clay: a coarse one first, then finer ones, smoothed by hand until the face has expression. Clay from the Ganga is the preferred material. Painting and dressing come last, and many artisans say the chokkhu daan, the painting of the eyes, is the moment they stop thinking of it as a sculpture.

The calendar. Work begins months ahead. A tradition many workshops follow is to bless the straw frames around Rath Yatra, in the monsoon, so the idols are already taking shape long before autumn.

Not only Durga. The same hands make Kali, Saraswati, Jagaddhatri and Lakshmi through the year. Kumartuli idols also travel abroad, to Bengali communities in the UK, the US, Australia and elsewhere, and a puja in a hall in another continent may begin with a clay goddess that left from a Kolkata lane.

The ornaments. The shimmering decoration on many idols is daker saj, made of foil and patterned material. The name is said to come from dak, “post”, because the material was once imported by mail. Alongside it you’ll find shola (pith) work, delicate and white, made by a separate community of craftspeople.

The quiet worry. Fewer young people want to join a craft that is seasonal, physically hard and unevenly paid. Many Kumartuli families are third or fourth generation, and some artisans worry about the next one. It’s worth a line in your post, because it gives the beauty some weight.

Kolkata’s pujas, beyond the pandals

Barir pujas vs. barowari. Kolkata has two worlds side by side. One is the old family pujas, bonedi bari, held in ancestral homes like Sovabazar Rajbari, Jorasanko and Hatkhola, where rituals follow family tradition passed down for centuries. The other is the community puja, with its theme, lights and crowds.

The theme revolution. Over recent decades, pandals have turned into temporary architecture. Some pandals resemble palaces, a forest, a village, or a famous monument. Hundreds of workers, from artists and carpenters to lighting teams, are busy for weeks.

Thakur dekha. Going out to see the idols isn’t casual in Kolkata. People plan routes, argue over which pandal wins, and queue for hours. The walk itself is the festival.

Dhunuchi and dhaak. The dhaak drums set the beat, and the dhunuchi dance, with a clay burner of smoking coconut husk held in the hands, is a craft of its own, and sometimes even a competition.

Sindoor khela. On Dashami, married women smear vermilion on the goddess and on each other before she leaves. The mood is joyful and a little heartbreaking, because she’s going home.

Bisarjan. The idols are taken to the Ganga and immersed. The clay dissolves back into the river it came from, which is the whole circle of Kumartuli in one image.

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