Thousands of wooden frames depicting vignettes of life in home confinement adorn a puja pandal in Behala.
Almost every frame shows a sensory organ. One frame shows a pair of eyes, another a stretched arm, a third a slice of the ear.
“Each frame symbolises snippets of home confinement. As people were locked within the four walls during the peak of the pandemic, their sensory organs were also restricted,” said Sanjoy Ghosh, the artist behind the pandal.
“Their vision was restricted, their sense of smell, sound and touch were also restricted. I have tried to capture that sense of confinement.”
The puja of Behala Young Men’s Association stands off SN Roy Road. The two walls and the roof above are dotted with the frames.
The idol of the goddess and her children stand on a raised dais. The idol’s background is based on patachitra, a traditional Bengal form of cloth-based scroll painting.
When Metro visited the pandal on Tuesday, Ghosh was giving final instructions to workers.
Half of the frames had been set up on the walls and the roof and the rest lay on the ground.
The pandal will be ready in another 48 hours, he said.
Ghosh has tried to portray daily activities that kept many people busy during the lockdown. “The blank frames represent the lives lost to Covid 19,” he said.
“The pandemic has hit our coffers for two years on the trot. We are having to make do with a modest budget,” said Palash Saha, a member of the organising committee.