A stone’s throw from Gurusaday Museum,a Sarbajanin (community)Durga Puja paid tribute to folk art and its practitioners and collectors through its pandal,decor, idol and accompanying music.
SB Park Sarbajanin Durga Puja in Thakurpukur had Lokshilpa Prabaha, or the flow of folk art, as its theme. Dolls, kantha canopies, folk art and craft were in abundance at this pandal with a gigantic painting of one of the foremost patrons of Bengal folk art —Gurusaday Dutt.
Artist Partha Dasgupta, who taught at Government College of Art and Craft and did his masters from Kala Bhavana in Santiniketan, was toying with the idea of having folk art as a theme since 2018.
He has been the artist for this puja in Thakurpukur for several years and has worked on bricks, shola and on ceramics.
“I have been thinking about how to showcase folk art on a mass platform like Durga Puja. It was only this year that I felt I was ready,” said Dasgupta.
Art historian Tapati Guha Thakurta, who had put together the dossier for the Unescoinscription for Calcutta’s Durga Puja, said of the SB Park puja: “This was one of the finest and best researched Durga Puja productions this season. The entire installation and each object on display magnetised me.”
Dasgupta began by making an inventory of where there were folk art museums in Bengal,got pictures of such museums and collected information on them. His team of art college graduates and interns were then made to attend seminars by folk art specialists like Debdutta Gupta, kantha specialists Ashok Das and Shyamali Das, Darshan Shah of Weavers Studio, architect Abin Chaudhuri and others.
A replica of a 17th-century Balgopal from Barishal.
Then came the task of commissioning the art work. Dasgupta travelled to Nanoorin Birbhum to have Lovely Khatun do the intricate canopy over the Durga idol.
At Mahishdhal in Birbhum, he got artisans who make bamboo fish traps to shape Ganesh’s carrier, the mouse. Wood-carvers from South Dinajpur made masks.“Since a lot of folk art is about the animal kingdom, like birds, tigers, lions, jackals,I got each of the idols’ bahans(carriers) made by folk artisans. They were all made in larger than life sizes,” said Dasgupta.
Balagarh in Hooghly, known for boat-making, provided the owl, carrier of Lakshmi which was made of three large boats. Haansh or the swan, Saraswati’s carrier, was placed between two fibre glass sandesh moulds. Every item in the pandal was a folk art or craft.
“Basically, I was trying to create awareness about folk art,” said Dasgupta. Collections from undivided Bengal in the nearby GurusadayMuseum, which now sadly remains closed as the central government stopped its grant from 2017, were replicated in the pandal. A 19th century idol from Faridpur, another 17th centuryBalgopal from Barishal were recreated as were two doors of the Rajrajeshwari Mandir in Katalpur in Hooghly where Lakshmi, Saraswati, Ganesh and Kartik were placed. While the original door had carvings of Dasavatar ,here they were replaced by Bratachari and Raibeshe dance poses. Everything in the pandal, says the artists, is from rural Bengal apart from the woodcutBattala paintings among which were Benimadhab Bhattacharya’s Kali.
Says Rituparna Basu, an associate professor of history who did her PhD on the revival of folk art: “The canopy of kantha, the giant sweetmeat mould, the wooden sculptures and Kalighat paintings and dolls remind us of the folk heritage that finds a new space and newer ways of relating to the younger generation through this puja.”
A peacock, Kartick’s bahan, made of iron rods.
A tribute to Gursuday Dutt was paid with a large painting of his done by David Malakar from Dasgupta’s team. The accompanying music was composed by folk music band Dohar with lyrics by Akash Chakrabarti, written like a patachitra gaan.
“Shono shono sudhijan, kathak er barnan, SB Park er museum e kori amantran. Gurusday Dutt moshai chilen e padaye, tar tairi jadughar aaj o shobha paye.” (Listen good people, to the description of the singer, we invite you to the museum of SB Park. Gurusaday Dutt used to be in the neighbourhood, his created museum still stands).The only sad note to this huge tribute is that the fate of Gurusaday Museum with its vast collection of artefact remains uncertain. As organiser Ajoy Majumdar said: “A lot of visitors kept asking us about the fate of Gurusaday Museum.I hope our puja created awareness about it.”