Jagat Mukherjee Park’s 2025 Durga Puja pandal theme merges technology with tradition. Titled ‘Artificial Intelligence: Boon or Bane’, the pandal recreates a futuristic world imagined 50 years ahead, where humans and robots coexist uneasily and the Goddess represents the triumph of human values over technological dominance.
The pandal, designed by artist Subal Pal, resembles a giant time machine. As visitors walk in, they are transported to a robotic city where the sky is missing, the air is filled with lights and distorted keyboards hang above. Towering structures dominate, and a “time-table machine” is placed at the centre to symbolically propel visitors into a world decades ahead.
What awaits them is not merely spectacle but reflection. Through projections, the pandal shows how technology has caged human life. The idol, however, remains traditional in form. At her feet, Mahishasura rises slightly above the ground, portrayed symbolically as the darker face of AI, the threat of manipulation, loss of control and blind dependence, vanquished by Durga.
Jagat Mukherjee Park Durga Puja is in its 89th year and has a history of daring themes. From the Bongaon local train to underwater metro routes, the organisers have often surprised pandal-hoppers with their imagination. This year, their AI-inspired pandal continues that tradition by making art a mirror to raging issues and global threats.