Visitors see a theme pandal for a few days: a temple that seems to have been carved from rock, a village made of terracotta, a cave of glass. Few see how long it takes. For the big community pujas, work on the next year often starts not long after the last idol has gone into the river.
The idea
A theme puja begins with a committee and an artist. Committees invite designers, usually called art directors, to propose a theme: a craft from a corner of Bengal, an environmental message, a memory of the city, or a single material pushed as far as it will go. The design takes in everything a visitor will see: the outside of the pandal, the path through it, the light, the sound and, in most theme pujas, the idol itself.
The money comes from the neighbourhood’s chanda, from sponsors whose banners line the approach roads, and in recent years from a grant the state government gives to community pujas. The budgets of the best known pujas run into crores of rupees.
Bamboo first
Almost every pandal, however solid it looks, stands on a frame of bamboo tied together with rope, built by specialist pandal makers from the ground up, sometimes several storeys high. Over the frame go plywood, cloth, fibreglass, thermocol and whatever the theme calls for. It is all temporary, built in a park, a playground or across a street, and it has to stand through October storms and the weight of the crowds.
One material, thousands of times
Many of the most remembered pandals were made from a single material used thousands of times over: clay tea cups, jute, cane, bottles, buttons or terracotta tiles. Others bring in a traditional craft, with artisans from villages across Bengal and beyond working on site for weeks: patachitra scroll painters, dokra metal casters, wood carvers and weavers. For many of them the Puja is the biggest commission of the year.
The idol is part of the design
In a theme puja the idol rarely follows the old pattern. Its proportions, its style and even its material are designed to match the pandal, so the goddess might be carved, cast, painted in a folk style or close to abstract. Image makers from Kumartuli and elsewhere work to the art director’s drawings, and the idol is usually installed only days before the Puja.
Light
After dark the pandal becomes a different thing. Lighting designers, many from Chandannagar, the town up the Hooghly famous for its light work, build moving displays out of thousands of bulbs and LEDs along the approach roads and inside the pandal. The best pujas are worth seeing twice: once in daylight for the craft, and once at night for the light.
Judges, crowds and the end
In the days before Shashthi, award juries tour the city, and many committees open their pandals early so the judges, and the first visitors, can see them before the crush. Then come four nights of queues, volunteers with whistles and one-way routes through the neighbourhood. After Dashami the pandal comes down almost as quickly as it went up. The bamboo is reused, the materials are cleared, and within a few weeks the park is a park again.