craziness. chaos. calcutta.

in keeping with my whirlwind traveling style, i headed straight from ahmedabad to calcutta, mid-navratri. in fewer than two hours i had essentially traversed the country from west to east. (by plane, obviously, though i'll bet that's an epic train trip). it occurred to me at some point that morning that i hadn't really made any arrangements at all for this city i was suddenly in. i had a momentary rush of panic, which quickly subsided into dead-to-the-world sleep on the flight.

luckily, things worked out. as they have tended to for me here. i admit this is principally due to the friendly nature of the people here and the few connections i've managed to forge. i luckily found a place to stay that happened to be in the thick of all the activity, way down south near some of the bigger pandals. this was convenient in some ways (walking to pandals) but not in others (traffiiiic). the place itself.. not exactly the ritz but the price was right and it had rooms available. plus, why bring your own sheets if you never get to use them, right?

chai in little clay cups. i love it!

that night i wandered around dazed, confused by all the commotion happening around me and disoriented in this giant new city i found myself in. i wandered in and out of some nearby pandals which, by the way, are structures built to house the deities for the days of worship and veneration. apparently the last three nights of the nine are the biggest here, with elaborate light shows and loud pujas during the night. as the light began to fade i could see i had not been misinformed - the giant light displays (picture giant lite-brites) of faces and flowers lit up the alleys and the crowds got even heavier. as for myself, i popped into a few sari shops (got a beautiful silk one on sale!) and retired to my hotel room with a chicken roll and some sweets. it was a long day, alright?

the next day began the start of my whirlwind pandal-tour in earnest. i was fortunate enough to have a wonderful guide in my friend's brother souvik. he and his friends guided us all over the city, sometimes walking, sometimes jamming ourselves into rickshaws or cabs. and it was hot. i can't remember ever being so thirsty (although i'm sure i have been.. italy in july, rajasthan in may..) - just constantly thinking about when i could get water next and how cold it would be. but i digress.

the pandals! also known as pujas. they. are. humungous. if i thought the ganpati pandals in mumbai were elaborate, these were just over the top insanity. in mumbai, the pandals may have had rather decorated interiors in the immediate area surrounding the deity. but the exteriors themselves were largely just tarps or perhaps even just an opening for a door. not so in calcutta. the exteriors were as enormous as they were elaborate - towering structures that you had to remind yourself were, indeed, just temporary. at times it felt a little like being at disneyworld. all these 'fake' environments created. like walking around epcot. but instead of 'italy' and 'japan' you encountered different types of durgas. very surreal.

over the years the pandals have grown more elaborate - thanks in part to the competitions and prizes that are now awarded - and have developed themes that change from year to year. the themes seemed to range from materials (straw, glass, rope, clay - one made entirely out of aluminum kitchenware) to larger messages. (one of the biggest ones' was 'global warming' - i thought it best not to point out how many trees and bamboo shoots had been sacrificed to get that particular message across). here are just a sampling of the variety we saw:

durga visible through the straw and bamboo

all ceramic durga, quite stylized i must say

typical yellow maa durga in her aluminum foil surroundings

a very trippy prismatic effect at the 'glass puja'

this is just a smattering of the incredible variety of pandals that we saw throughout the city. and of course we only scratched the surface here. there are hundreds (thousands?) of these throughout the city and even three full days was not enough to cover it. it was completely exhausting but incredible to witness.