Every year, as Kolkata lights up for Durga Puja, millions of visitors stop to admire the city’s spectacular pandals. Cameras capture their intricate structures, dramatic lighting and elaborate artwork, while crowds gather to experience the themes that have been months in the making.
But behind every striking pandal are artists and artisans whose names often remain unknown to the visitors admiring their work.
For them, Durga Puja is not simply a five-day celebration. It is the culmination of months of physical labour, creativity and dedication. Artists travel from different parts of Bengal, temporarily moving into pandal sites and working for nearly three months to turn an idea on paper into a full-scale installation.
The hands behind Kolkata’s biggest attractions
The work begins long before the first visitor enters a pandal. Once a Puja committee finalises its theme and budget, artists begin translating the concept into a physical structure.
At Rajdanga Naba Uday Sangha, artist Debashish Barui created a pandal around the theme Sodhon, which explores ecological balance between humans and nature. The installation brings together natural elements, handmade structures, light and sound projections.
For artists such as Barui, the creative process also involves working within financial limitations. A fixed budget can sometimes mean abandoning certain design ideas. Additional support this year allowed him to realise more of the structure he had originally envisioned.
Three months of work for a few days of glory
The spectacular installations visitors see during Puja are temporary. Artists and workers may spend close to three months living and working at the pandal site, often through long hours, to complete structures that will remain standing only for the duration of the festival.
Much of the work is done by hand, from creating individual elements to painting, assembling and finishing the installation.
For these artists, the temporary nature of their work is part of the profession. Once the festival ends, the elaborate structures are dismantled and disappear, even though they may have taken weeks or months to create.
Artist Dipankar Das, who has worked behind Durga Puja pandals for nearly 13 years, described the joy of seeing people appreciate his creations as one of the biggest rewards of the profession.
From everyday painters to Puja artists
For some artisans, pandal-making is an extension of the artistic skills they use throughout the year.
Artist Somnath Chakraborty, who comes from Burdwan district, paints houses when he is not working on Puja installations. During Durga Puja, however, the pandal becomes a different kind of artistic space for him.
The process is deeply personal. Artists create the structures with their own hands, knowing that they will eventually have to dismantle what they have built.
That fleeting nature can make the experience emotional. The structure may survive for only a few days, but the memory it creates among visitors can last much longer.
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Making Puja more accessible
The effort behind this year’s Puja experience has also extended to making the pandals more accessible. At eight shortlisted pandals, QR codes have been placed at the entrances so visitors can listen to audio descriptions of the themes in eight Indian and international languages.
Videos in sign language have also been made available for visitors who are deaf or hard of hearing, while the initiative aims to make the pandal experience more inclusive for people with visual and hearing disabilities.
Their work may be temporary, but their art remains
When the lights come on and the crowds arrive, the artists who spent months building the pandals often disappear into the background. Their names may not be as familiar as the Puja committees or the themes they create, but their work is impossible to miss.
Every handmade structure, painted surface and carefully constructed installation carries their labour.
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Kolkata’s Durga Puja may last only a few days, but the creativity behind it takes months. The pandals eventually come down, yet the artists leave behind something more lasting: a piece of their imagination that becomes part of the city’s festive memories.