ABSTRACT
As the clay-smeared streets of Kumartuli get washed out by the torrential rains, the leaky roof of the artist’s workshop covered with tarpaulin and plastic sheets gives up protecting the interior. The artists work night and day to finish the unfinished clay idols as the city gears up to celebrate its biggest festival – Durga Puja. Kumartuli, the abode of god-makers, tucked in the winding lanes of North Kolkata by the serene river Hooghly, is closely connected with the initiation of Durga Puja in the city as well. But each year as the colourful processions with trumpeting sounds of dhak and dhol (drums) take the idols to their puja mandap (place of worship), there is a melancholy behind this welcoming note. The city knows that after five days there will be another procession to take the deity back to the banks of the river for immersion, where it will meet its end. During the initial days of festivity, the lifeless clay idol is invoked with life through chants and hymns. The process transforms an idol into a deity, despite knowing the ephemeral nature of its existence. Invocation and immersion, two seemingly divergent yet rhythmic processes, are not only rituals of Hindu worship but signify the transient nature of life itself. Life, where permanence is an anomaly and where each creation comes with the precondition of destruction. Living close to the idol-makers’ colony of Kolkata, where the abstract god takes a material form, and the river Ganges, where it meets its end, this philosophy is well known to people. But no one thought that the very existence of this colony could come under threat and the artists could face the same destiny as the deity that they create.
