Shashti Pandal-Hopping

So, day one of Durga Puja down, and I am all Puja'd out. Last night we went pandal-hopping with a group of friends starting at 5:00, and went directly from them to Protima Didi's group at 7:30. We were out until around 9:30 or so, and then ate supper and chatted at Protima's until around 11:00. It was a late night! But lots and lots of fun. Here's a short video taken of the pandal by Protima Didi's house. Protima is the one who asks if we want to see the dancers. YOu can also see Piu, our language driller--she's the woman briefly shown at the very end that doesn't say anything.



Pandal-hopping is cool. I guess most people don't go the first evening of Puja, so it wasn't as crowded, which was nice. But even still, there were a ton of people. How do I even describe it? What you do is, you go out into the streets, which may or may not be closed off to traffic, and there are strings of lights and advertisements everywhere, and people selling food and stuff, and you wander around like this from pandal to pandal. Some pandals are traditional, and some are very modern. Here are just a selection of the many, many pictures I took.

This is the first pandal we went into, and also my favorite so far.



This is its protima--very modern.



You might notice that all of the protimas have the same components, but are rendered differently by the artists.



This guy was selling some sort of stamps--Protima Didi said they were for sari patterns or something, but here he's stamping this little girl's hand.



Another pretty sweet one.



These guys came out of nowhere and started drumming for us. It was pretty cool, but really loud too!

Probably my second-favorite pandal--it's made all out of earthenware jars and pots. The protima in this one was actually very traditional.

The pandal in Deshapriya Park wasn't quite finished yet!

One of the oldest pandals in Kolkata--75 years. Okay, this confuses me a little bit though. Pandals are temporary structures. I guess what they mean is that every year this pandal is exactly the same. There's real gold on the protima, which they take off before submerging it in the Hooghly. Oh yes...another aspect of Puja I forgot to tell you about. Well, all in due time!