When it comes to celebrating Durga Puja in traditional Bengali way in Delhi, Chittaranjan Park (CR Park)’s Kali Mandir Society, always comes with its unique style to celebrate it. While pandals across Delhi are busy experimenting with different themes, CR Park, with artists from Kolkata and delicacies from across India is flaunting its old style with panache.
“Our kind of celebrations are always traditional. We don’t experiment and this time also Kali Mandir’s way of celebrating it is traditional only. In fact, we celebrate it in a clean way. Despite humongous footfall, the main temple and pandals are always clean,” said Astitava Bhowmik, President of CR Park Kali Mandir Society.
The pandal offers an array of cultural performances by artists from Delhi and Bengal. Amongst other performances, one of the highlights was street play by Zindagi Theatre Group, Faridabad which focused on the theme of women empowerment.
“We through characters like lord Vishnu and his creation ‘stree’ (woman), tried to portray the pressure that society builds on a woman for being a woman. We have come to the CR Park for the first time and the reception has been great,” said Gunjan Tiwari, one of the actors.
From Bengal, the society invited Kolkata based renowned tabla player, Ustaad Tanmay Bose among others. “We have a series of cultural activities this year. The cultural programmes are getting sponsorships from Kumar Sanu Musical School and Le Rhythm. So, Tuesday’s cultural fest was sponsored by Le Rhythm,” Bhowmik said.
Talking about the budget he said, “Since last year, we have started floating tenders. This year, the lowest bidding was Rs 15 lakh for Kali Mandir Pandals.”
Apart from the artists, the pandal also has devotees coming all the way from Kolkata. Aparna Basu, a 70 year old lady from Kolkata said that she initially came here to meet her family but now she is feeling at home.
Amidst this, some vendors said that the footfall was a notch below on Tuesday however the Pandal expects it to be huge on Wednesday and Thursday.
“On Monday, the people were more in numbers, I hope that there will be more people on Wednesday but today the footfall has been less,” said Akshay, a stall vendor from Odisha.
Bhowmik said, “On Ashtami and Navmi, the footfall is huge because non-Bengalis also come. Last night, the footfall was even larger than the last year and we are expecting more people coming tomorrow and a day after.” Last year, the footfall was around 50,000 in an hour, he said.
