Durga Puja: Kolkata festival confronts crime against female doctor

A trainee physician was discovered raped and murdered at one of Kolkata’s oldest facilities on August 9th, shaking the American capital. Though an imprisonment was soon made, charges of a cover-up and evidence-tampering immediately surfaced, fuelling people outrage. Since then, regular protests, people bars and lighting rallies have filled Kolkata’s roads. Today, the state’s largest event unfolds amid some of the town’s most sincere protests in years.

Kolkata is hosting its biggest yearly event, Durga Puja, when the ten-armed Goddess Durga is said to come to visit her mortal house with her whole family in truck.

The queen is seated in the middle of a lion at Durga Puja pandals, which are temporary churches, flanked by her kids, elephant-headed Ganesha, the hero heaven Kartikeya on his bird, Lakshmi, and Saraswati, and the goddesses Lakshmi and Saraswati, as well as the defeated bull beast, which represents the glory of good over evil.

These days, it’s not just the angels that bring the masses. The pandals have become quite sophisticated. Some attempt to recreate monuments like the Sundarbans ‘ mangrove forests or Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. Others are installations with cultural messaging- save water, pray for world peace, protect handicrafts.

That led to the designation of Durga Puja as one of the biggest city art festivals in the world. The art group Mass Art has been producing previews of some Pujas specifically so that foreign visitors may experience how a” area transforms into a public museum,” according to its director, Dhrubajyoti Bose Suvo.

However, this time, the city’s largest city arts event is facing the biggest street protests Kolkata has seen in decades. Some of the gods are unique, and even the artwork on the surfaces reflects opposition and suffering with depictions of ladies and animals in striking red, black, and white.

The protests broke out after the 31-year-old doctor was found brutally killed at RG Kar Medical College on the night of 9 August. After a gruelling 36-hour shift, she had fallen asleep in a seminar room due to the lack of a designated rest area. Her half-naked body, bearing severe injuries, was discovered the next morning on the podium.

” Of course there is an effect]of the incident ] on us”, says visual artist Sanatan Dinda. Inside an ebony castle, I do not color. In my work, I speak of the world that surrounds me.

Upset over the affair, Dinda resigned from a government-run art institution. He says,” Now I am on the streets with everyone else. Then I have no anxiety”.

In a protest protest demanding justice for the person they dubbed “our Durga” in the ancient craft neighbourhood of Kumartuli in September, Dinda and the clay artists who created the Durga images staged a demonstration.

Dinda says he has made “improvisations” to the Durga graphics he was working on this year.

At one in Bagha Jatin in southern Kolkata, his family Goddess looks more furious than parental. She’s ejecting her neck from the lion she typically rides. Each of her ten arms has a weapon that can kill bad. Figures of dressed women and animals are depicted in striking red, black, and white in the artwork that depicts suffering and protest.

Art as a form of opposition is not new.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Defacement, commemorating the 1983 police killing of a man allegedly writing graffiti in the New York subway, found renewed relevance during the Black Lives Matter movement. Public artists like Jenny Holzer, Keith Haring, Diego Rivera, and Banksy – whose stencils span walls from Kyiv to the West Bank – have long used art to deliver political messages.

Durga Puja artwork is open art, but it’s also key to a religious celebration that fuels the country’s economy. A British Council report valued Durga Puja’s 2019 economic impact at over$ 4.5bn, nearly 3 % of West Bengal state’s GDP.

Neighborhood venues organizing ritual have to tread cautiously with such high stakes because there is so much at stake. They are unable to turn off hundreds of regular people who are seeking entertainment rather than a lecture. They receive financial aid from the government in the midst of the rallies. They must collaborate with the authorities on traffic control and grants.

A select few people have chosen to avoid paying the government.

One puja in Kankurgachi, in the northeastern side of the city, chose Lajja ( Shame ) as its theme after the protests erupted. Its Durga is draped over a woman’s body, her lion’s eyes, and bright sheet-clad system. The organizer is unmistakably associated with the antagonism group of the state.

Close by, another ritual creates a dashboard of the bereaved family, the family sitting on the bed, the parents at a sewing machine, their mother’s image in dentist’s scrubs on the walls. Another organisers are more cautious, not wanting to wade into democratic waters.

” But we still want to make a point, mainly as a women-led women-run club”, says Mousumi Dutta, chairman of the Arjunpur Amra Sabai Club.

Their style this year is Discrimination. The artist uses the Indian Constitution and its posts promoting justice as the goddess’s landscape, while regional actors play the role of the difference between the guarantee of the Constitution and actuality through road theatre.

The design had been chosen before, but the drama gave it a unique sense of urgency. ” We have decided to not visit this week’s Durga Puja a festival”, says Dutta. ” We are calling it a commitment instead. a commitment to end impunity against those who take to the streets to require fairness.

Even so, Durga Puja, a event centered on a goddess who defeats bad, has a strong appeal for justice for a woman. One puja now had a theme that presently fits the current zeitgeist that featured women power.

The designers of the Durga Puja design claim that they were already sat in the middle of the protests.

” Perhaps if it had occurred before, it would have been unique. Susanta Shibani Pal, one of the organizers, and about 450 citizens who were involved with me, say,” By August, I had a commitment to them.” But he says the issue” involuntarily” crept into the craft.

His installation Biheen ( The Void ) for the Tala Prattoy puja, covers 35, 000 sq ft, immersing the viewer into what he calls a “black hole”.

His Durga lacks figure, and her life force is represented by a flickering lamp, similar to the candles used in the protests. ” A viewers may publish this as my opposition. I may call it fluke. I started this job before RG Kar happened”, he said.

While some people incorporate the emotion of opposition into their Durga Puja skill, others incorporate opposition art into the same Durga Puja. Durga Puja is celebrated at the family residence in Kolkata by Chandreyee Chatterjee’s community for 16 years. In addition, Chatterjee took part in numerous road protests.

She admits that she was n’t excited to celebrate this year. They will still perform the Durga Puja, but with a different theme. ” We will do what the rites require, little more. Everything that comes under the heading of festivity, like dancers, is being done ahead with this year”.

A unique much badge was also created for her and her friends. It depicts a finger grabbing a flame in flames. We want fairness, Bengali is the opposite of what is said.

” I will be giving it to friends and family who come to our Puja”, says Chatterjee. We want to let people know how far away we are from home.