Puja was not over on Sunday for many. Calcuttans flocked to pandals across the city despite a cloudy sky and rain in some parts in the afternoon.

The crowd was marginally thinner than what it was in the last few days but there was a steady stream of pandal-hoppers since the morning.

The crowds swelled manifold by the evening, said the organisers of some pujas.

There was hardly any lull at Tala Prattoy, a major crowd-puller in north Calcutta, an organiser said.

"The queue to enter our pandal stretched over a kilometre. People are making the most of what is almost the last day of the festival," said Dhrubajyoti Basu, of Tala Prattoy.

"Towards the end of the Puja, many big pandals get repeat crowds. This has been the trend for some years,” he said.

South Calcutta saw a brief spell of rain but it caused only a minor inconvenience. Pandal-hoppers were seen taking shelter at temporary roadside stalls before heading for their next destinations.

Ashoke and Snigdha Chandra came with their son Rahul from Nalikul in Hooghly district to see some of the famous pujas in south Calcutta.

It started raining after the Chandras visited a few pandals. "We did not scrap our plan. We were not carrying an umbrella. We waited at a shelter for the rain to stop and then headed for Deshapriya Park,” said Rahul.

Laltu Mukherjee, the organising secretary at Tridhara Akalbodhan, said the crowd had thinned in the afternoon because of rain before swelling again.

"The drop was temporary. The crowd count picked up again after the rain stopped," said Mukherjee.

It was comparatively drier in north Calcutta and the pujas there saw a steady stream of people through the day.

Nidhi and Pavan Beriwal, from Girish Park, came in a group of 12. They started their day’s pandal-hopping at Sreebhumi Sporting Club, from where they set off for the pujas in Dum Dum Park.

"We visited different parts of the city every day. Today, we came to this part," said Pavan.

A section of pandal-hoppers took part in sindur khela and other pre-immersion rituals before hitting the streets.

Some chose to take out aged family members on Sunday hoping the seniors would not have to stand in queues for long to have a glimpse of the deity.

Some like Nupur Ghosh, however, started early. "I left home at 6am and returned by 8.30am," said Ghosh, from Gurusaday Road.

Her targets were two pujas — Telengabagan in Ultadanga and a puja in Baghajatin.

Ghosh chooses selectively. "I follow social media posts of creative people with whom I have a shared vision," said Ghosh, the vice-principal of a school.