The Telegraph - Calcutta

By the goddess, as bizarre as it gets

From snatches of lomg-playing records to crushed sugarcane,from body-scrubs to biscuits you cant bite --The Devi's address has gone from sublime to the strange like never before

'Bosepukur Talbagan Sarbojanin: RECORD-BREAKER The results are not out yet, but this Kasba puja has already broken quite a few records — more than 60,000, by conservative ‘official’ estimates. Hemanta Mukherjee, on a Columbia disc, is doing duty on a panel on the gate, as are Lata and Kishore on an Odeon 45 RPM. The price: just 10-15 paise per long-playing record, according to creator Pradip Dey, who got the idea from scrap dealers weighing broken records in Gopalnagar. Picture by Pabitra Das	Rajdanga Nabauday Sangha: BISCUIT BASTION “Ma, why have they pasted biscuits on the walls? Can I eat one?” asks a toddlerin this Kasba pandal. Thirty kinds of biscuits and breadsticks have added crunch to the Devi and the décor. The grounds have been specially pest-controlled for two months to keep creepy-crawlies away. The biscuits have been toughened in a heat chamber, but creator Kishor Das is keeping his fingers crossed that the rain god doesn’t melt down his efforts. Picture by Pabitra Das
Bosepukur Sitala Mandir: SWEET SUCCESS There’s no stopping the creative juices from flowing free, again at Kasba. It’s sugarcane pulp this year, after last year’s clay-cup wonder. Creator Bandan Raha has kept the cane-crushing machines busy and the juice-makers in business for over 45 days now. Six to seven lorries of sugarcane have been squeezed dry. And the refuse is on view on the 72 panels (depicting Lord Krishna’s childhood antics), walls and the huge lantern. No entry for flies or fire, insist the organisers, thanks to an anti-moisturiser sunbath and a liberal sprinkling of anti-fire lotion. Picture by Pabitra Das	Santosh Mitra Square Sarbojanin Durgotsav: SPLIT is showing “How long will Bengal remain neglected by the Central government?” is the key question at Lebutala Park. Bifurcation of the Eastern Railway is the theme here: depicted by a black chain that cleaves the Fairlie Place building replica. Adding a historical twist to the power-play pandal is the model of the first engine, made in 1862 in Glasgow, that is stopped dead in its uprooted tracks at Dhanbad by pro-bifurcation activists. No Puja prizes for guessing who green-flagged this pandal? Mamata no-bifurcation Banerjee, of course. Picture by Pradip Sanyal
Karbagan Sarbojanin Durgotsav: NEXT TO GODLINESS If ever there was a pandal promoting personal hygiene, this is it. The organisers cleaned out the markets in the city (and a few districts, too), to gather over 40,000 loofahs (body-scrubs) that deck the interiors and exteriors of the Ultadanga pandal. There is ‘social conscience’ at work behind this out-of-the-bathroom idea — inspire people to move away from the popular synthetic scrubs, and back towards their roots, to help the poor farmers eke out a living. The Devi is, thankfully, made from the more traditional mati. Picture by Aranya Sen