Puja 2010: modest

Strapped for cash and concerned about security, Durga Puja is a low key affair in the city.

This Durga Puja, organisers have wrung the laundry out to put on stage local talent who will keep the audience coming for the after-hours entertainment that Bengalis call the ‘cultural programme.’ Result: the evenings are studded with acts full of Jhumpas and Tumpas to make up for the thin attendance of Kolkata artistes.

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Three hundred and thirty pandals have witnessed 30,000 footfalls this year. “We were uncertain about security arrangements because of the Commonwealth Games, so 40 per cent of the programmes have our children on stage,” says Narayan Deb of the Mela Ground Organising Committee, Chittaranjan Park. “This is 10 per cent more than last year’s.” Ashim Banerjee, vice-president of the B-block puja samiti, has spaced his kiddies’ programmes well — in between programmes of artistes who are either “rising” in Delhi or have ‘risen” in Kolkata. The children’s acts are not fillers, he says, even though he admits that local talents have made it to the festival programme calendar “50 per cent more than 2009... There is Arun, Barun, Kironmala from a well-known anthology of ghostly stories on Saptami and Chhotu, a ballet on a ragpicker on Nabomi, Saturday,” he says.

Another reason for the abundance of amateur acts this year is that traditional donors among corporates have begged off citing the Games as reason. “We got no ads from Nestle this year,” says Utpal Banerjee of Mayur Vihar Phase 1, Kalibari, “so we increased our personal contribution. Last year, each family contributed Rs 1,000. This year, some gave Rs 5,000.” The B-Block entertainment budget for Durga Puja, for example, is between Rs 3-4 lakh each year. This year, they managed a lakh.

Local artists also helped with puja décor. At the Kalibari, CR Park, Biswajit Das and Camellia Suman, painters with day jobs, have put up a Durga exhibition. But it’s Miloni puja samiti in Mayur Vihar Phase 1, that’s bagged this year’s biggie — an Amit Kumar show at 9 pm. Today.