In a Dum Dum Puja, Durga is a puppet. The priest and the state think they have the Devi in their control but the artist knows better.
Bharat Chakra Club of Dum Dum Park is doing a sequel to its last year's theme. If 2022 was about Amitwa (ego), this year it is Bhranti (illusion).
Young artist Anirban Das shared the complex plot playing out in the pandal, where the priest and the ruler think they are supreme but the real Raja is elsewhere. His creation is a commentary on contemporary times where the ruler and the priest believe they can pull strings "to make God do as they like".
Men in power will continue to feed their egos and keep making mistakes, said Das.
"My theme this year is Bhranti or error, taking off from last year's theme of Amitwa or ego. I used talpatar sepai (palm-leaf soldier) last year to show how the ego and the power of the king become so overpowering that the king begins to think that he controls god. The king and the priest decide how and where god will reside. But that's not the reality. We are actually dancing to the tunes of Nature."
Pratik Choudhury, joint secretary of Bharat Chakra Club, said they wanted to portray how mistaken powerful men often are about the real might.
"We wanted to portray that men might think they are powerful, but actually it is the Mother Goddess who is powerful. We have used a lot of traditional materials of Bengal like hay, puppets and patachitras, which I hope people will appreciate," Choudhury told The Telegraph on the night of Mahalaya.
Das has tried to portray the tug-of-war using various kinds of traditional dolls, like "beni putul, tepa putul, and the string puppets of Bengal".
"The Durga is a string puppet of Panskura. She is being pulled by the king on one side and the priest on the other. We are trying to say here that 'Raja you are ignoring the Almighty who is making us all dance to his music. He pulls the strings of our luck, just like puppets are pulled by the strings of the puppet muster," Das said.
Here, the mandap is shaped like a king's crown made of hay. "Don't make the mistake of thinking hay is a poor man's material. Wherever there is an abundance of crop, there is hay," said Das.
And right at the entrance sit three men in god masks with glove puppets, or beni putul, from Padmatamli of East Midnapore.
Past the entrance, there are patachitras on the walls of the pandal depicting the life and the doings of a king. Tepa putuls, mud dolls with limbs and a head, line the patachitras.
Beni putuls are glove dolls with face made of paper pulp and hands made of wood. The tepa putul is the lowest in the hierarchy of dolls.
String puppets are made of organic matter, usually shola-pith or sponge-wood, a plant that grows wild in the wetlands. They are manipulated by at least six strings. Unless specifically required for a character, puppets do not have legs, the absence of which is hidden by the clothes.