A team from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will be in Kolkata accepted an invitation from the Mamata Banerjee-government to participate in pre-Durga Puja celebration scheduled on September 1. The director and UNESCO representative to India, Bhutan, the Maldives and Sri Lanka – Eric Falt – has sent a letter to the state’s chief secretary confirming participation.
In Kolkata, Durga Puja is not just a religious event; it resembles a carnival with jaw-dropping public art installations cropping up all across the city. Lakhs of artists, crafts people and workers put together this wondrous show every year. For one week, Kolkata gets transformed into a huge public art gallery with thousands of pandals—the temporary structures housing the goddess—popping up on streets. These structures have extravagant themes and artworks. Vehicles and people weave in and out, interacting with these amazing pop-up structures all around them. You can think of the pandals as giant art installations, and ‘pandal-hopping’ as a gigantic public gallery crawl.
