BJ Block

Everyone wanted to see the China- themed puja for which the organisers even visited China for reference. BJ Block drew lakhs but managed it such that it seemed to flow rather than get bottle-necked.

“We’ve visited pandals all over the city but found BJ to have the best crowd management,” said friends Rakhi Chowdhury of Maniktala and Barnali De of Lake Town. “It’s so pleasant to walk into a pandal without having to be herded with ropes.”

On the First Avenue outside, however, one-third of the road had been cordoned off by ropes and guardrails for pedestrians. This was necessary as much of the footpath could not be used. It had dumped garden waste, broken tiles...many simply found the pavement too high to climb on to.

“Pandal-hoppers are not being allowed to alight from vehicles at the entrance of the puja. It would slow down traffic. They are having to get off at a distance and walk back,” said a policeman on duty. “But they aren’t complaining. The real trouble-makers are the VIPs who are flouting rules.”

Organiserspeak: “This year we went international and everyone wanted to see the result,” said Umashankar Ghosh Dastidar, organising president. “We have been publicising the puja since May and that drew huge crowds. But we were particular about having a big entrance so people could move about freely.”

AK Block

Pandal-hoppers, policemen, hawkers…all conceded that the AK Block puja was a massive crowd-puller. “I kept a thousand phuchkas on my stand everyday and I sold out on four days since Chaturthi,” said Pawan Kumar Gupta, a phuchka-seller at the entry point of AK Block on Navami. “Tonight, too, half my stock is over and it’s only 9pm.”

The flank from Kestopur Canal to Tank 8 Island had been closed to vehicles and the opposite flank had been made two-way. “Parking is allowed only along the canal,” said a policeman posted at the Island. Still, the volume of traffic was so huge that movement was sluggish.

The sea of visitors however strolled in with broad smiles. “For a worthy pandal, we are ready to wait,” smiled Kakoli Samaddar of Baguiati, waiting at the final rope barricade between her and the pandal. She had come to see the huge metallic Ravana her friends had been talking about. The puja’s theme was Sitaharan.

Organiserspeak: “This time we had lots non-Bengali visitors, many even from out of Bengal,” said convenor Raja Banik. General secretary Aritra Sen added that they allowed people to approach the entrance from two sides. “We opened the approach from Tank 8 as well as Tank 8 Island. People had to walk less and since the entrance was wide the walk was comfortable,” he said.

AE (Part 1)

The block has built quite a brand for itself over the past few years and visitors made a beeline for it yet again.

“We never miss AE Part 1 no matter how crowded it is,” said Gautam Mehta of Central Avenue on Navami night. “One night of the pujas, my family and I come to the Salt Lake-Lake Town area and I find out from my friends here about the best ones. This block is always on the list.”

This year the theme was about hands. The asur idol too, lay on hands.

Dipankar Sarkar, one of the security guards at the pandal, said 30 of them were on duty, asking visitors not to push and not to touch the installations. “At night, it’s so crowded we can’t even step aside for a sip of water. We’ve brought water bottles into the pandal now,” he said.

Shyamal Bairagi, a hawker, said he has been selling 2kg of ghoti gorom outside the AE Part 1 pandal every night. “That’s double of what I sell on regular days,” he said.

Organiserspeak: While the organisers were pleased to see visitors appreciate the theme, they wouldn’t hide their disappointment about the closure of the Lake Town footbridge during the Pujas.

Police claimed the bridge couldn’t hold the weight of the hundreds of pandal-hoppers plying on it and instead asked them to use a subway that was opened at a distance.

“Our puja opened on Tritiya to massive crowds. But there was a sharp fall the next day, when they shut the bridge. Previously the Sreebhumi puja crowd would simply cross that bridge to come to Salt Lake. Ours would be the first puja once they reached here,” said secretary Supriyo Chakraborty.

The puja saw a huge rush — till 5am on Saptami and Ashtami — but organisers feel it was half of what it could have been otherwise.

AJ Block

Completing the big-ticket puja triangle around the Route no 206 bus terminus was AJ Block. They used the yantra as their theme and the pandal was red.

Till Navami night, the crowd was so thick that the walkway through the road divider between AJ and BJ blocks had to be turned one-way at a time. “There’s no other way to do it,” said the policeman on duty. “The rush is so heavy that we are allowing people to walk in one direction at a time.”

Some pandal-hoppers knew how to escape the crowd. “We knew it would be too crowded during the Puja days so we waited to come here on Dashami,” said Priyanka Pal of Beleghata, who had come with her family of eight. Block women had climbed up a ladder and were performed sindur khela but the Pals, and many other visitors like them, continued their puja parikrama.

Organiserspeak: “We had heavy footfall Panchami onwards. That peaked on Ashtami and Navami,” says joint secretary Moinak Dutta. “This time our pandal was situated diagonally in the park such that the entry gate was slightly narrower than the exit. But we had 25 block volunteers besides security guards on duty and we let in the crowd in batches. We also had a separate entrance for residents, the elderly and VIPs.”

FD Block

The verdict is out. The dinosaur-themed puja hit bullseye, especially with kids, and gave FD Block, what the organisers are saying, is its highest footfall ever.

“This is the first time we came to FD Block,” said Ayush Sharma, a Class IV pandal-hopper from Howrah on Navami. “It is far from our house but my parents brought me as I wanted to see the dinosaurs.”

All roads to the puja had been shut to vehicles and past midnight on Navami, the crowd had reached the Labony Island, taken a U-turn and was swelling on the opposite flank too.

The crowd was being divided into 12 sections, using rope barricades held by the police, and every five minutes or so, the ropes would be released for the crowd from one section to go occupy the next. Police estimated each section to comprise more than 500 people.

Kids would run ahead, parents would chase them and the cops would shout: “Aaste, aaste!” “Who will believe that these are people who haven’t slept five nights,” wondered out loud the policeman posted at the entrance. “Still, pandal-hoppers are co-operating with us and so we’ve averted anything untoward.”

“Let alone the early days of the puja, there were crowds at FD even on Dwadashi,” said Biplab Mandal, traffic inspector, Bidhannagar Police. “This year the traffic department deployed 50 more people — a total of 200 — for Salt Lake alone. They were deployed at FD and other popular pujas.”

Organiserspeak: “Few pujas think of children but we did and have reaped the reward,” said Saumitra Mukherjee, secretary of the puja. “The kids came with parents and many paid multiple visits. This is the biggest crowd we have got in 34 years, even bigger than the Titanic puja. The queue crossed Labony from Sashthi itself. Ashtami and Navami were the most crowded. The flow was steady till 5am.”VIPs.”

AE (Part 1) (Sudeshna Banerjee)

AJ Block (Mayukh Sengupta)

BJ Block (Mayukh Sengupta)

AK Block (Mayukh Sengupta)