Last weekend, the people of Calcutta added an additional dimension to my understanding of Puja. What I had known to be a small religious ceremony, where offerings were made to the gods, took on the meaning of an extravaganza of the arts, a visual feast: the Colours of Calcutta!

My wife Maren and I tried to see as much of the Puja as possible. On Sunday and Monday morning, our highly knowledgeable driver Andrew Michael drove us around town, and in the evenings, we joined the splendid Happenings programme showcasing the finest of arts that Calcutta has to offer during Puja.

The scintillating tabla tunes of Bikram Ghosh?s Rhythmscape were the perfect curtain-raiser for what turned out to be two days of arts galore. We had listened to classical Indian percussion music before, but Bikram?s fusion approach opened up a new and delightful perspective. When Bikram finally used his own face as a tabla, we were treated to some truly unbelievable sights and sounds.

Next, Happenings took us on a river cruise, where Howrah railway station lit in all its glory reminded me of temples on the Nile, lit for son-et-lumi?re.

Our second Happenings evening, as a prelude to late-night pandal-hopping, started with a spectacular classical dance event, Sutra: The Evolution of Odissi, composed and choreographed by Sharmila Biswas. The choreography, the dance and the costumes were eye candy at its best. Part of the cast was a handful of pre-teen boys from the villages of Orissa, dancers with extremely supple bodies, or should I say contortionists who standing on their hands, placed their feet in front of their face! With their unbelievable dance and acrobatics, drawing repeated applause, these young dancers put on a truly awesome show.

With Michael?s able guidance and a few leads from Monday?s Metro, we saw 14 pandals in the course of two mornings. I hadn?t seen anything like this before! The pandals we liked best were those where the artistes had used both the Durga scene and the shamiana as a canvas to express their unique vision and to showcase their craft.

Our favourites were two pandals in Kidderpore, 25 and 74 Palli Sarbojanin. In Colony Bazar, set in a small courtyard next to a Krishna shrine, we found another gem of a pandal, a pagoda-shaped shamiana decorated with little carousel-type pendants carrying small, lovingly-shaped and painted clay figurines. These pendants were not only on the shamiana, but also on the wall on the opposite side of the courtyard, facing the little ?temple?. When I stepped into the courtyard, I almost stretched out my right hand, because I thought I was looking at a row of prayer wheels, like I had seen at Tashi Lumpo, the Panchen Lama?s temple in Shigatse, in Tibet. The shamiana was also beautifully decorated on the inside, and the Durga scene was again a masterpiece.

While the idols will be dissolved in the Hooghly, their photographs on my dozen rolls of film will be fixed in the E 6 baths at Bourne & Shepherd.

 

Gunter Wehrmann arrived in Calcutta as Germany?s consul-general this August. He is an award-winning photographer