The arrival of the god of prosperity has heralded the festive season.
Ganesh Puja was celebrated with vigour in and around Calcutta. Pandals, big and small, have come up all over the city. Loudspeakers kept playing devotional songs dedicated to the elephant-headed god. The aroma of laddoos, piping hot khichdi and sabzi — part of the bhog distributed among pedestrians — filled the air in many neighbourhoods.
The city has around 400 licenced Ganesh Puja pandals, according to police.
“This is the number of pujas whose organisers had sought formal permission for their pandal. Many smaller pujas do not seek formal permission. So, the actual number is much more,” said an officer.
At Rakhal Mukherjee Road in Bhowanipore, the pandal of Ganapati Bhakt Mandal was made of glass. The puja turned 12 this year.
“Like every year, we are distributing 3,000 laddoos among the pedestrians,” said Gopi Thakker, the chief patron.
In Salt Lake’s EE Block, the Ganesh Puja pandal has been built to mimic a spacecraft of ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 mission.
This year the EE Block Sampriti Sangha that organises the Ganesh Puja near the water tank number 10 will have a “bhog and prasad distribution” on Sunday where patrons will be given laddoos and other prasad.
Partho Chakraborty, secretary of the EE Block Sampriti Sangha that organises the Ganesh Puja, said their puja was inaugurated on Friday evening where they had a Baul performance.
The puja committee has also lined up distribution of clothes to underprivileged women and children on Sunday.
In Kasba, the P Majumdar Bridge Indu Park Garden Committee’s puja turned 14. A magic show for children on Saturday evening was the among the highlights of the festival.
A 17ft idol adorns the pandal of Basudevpur Sri Sri Ganesh Puja in Behala. “We distributed clothes among 250 people on Friday. A blood donation camp is lined up for Sunday,” said Ratnadip Majumder, chief organiser of the Puja, which also turned 12 this year.
The shadow of the RG Kar rape and murder has tempered the celebrations as several organisers have called off musical soirees that are usually an intrinsic part of Ganesh Puja.
The puja organised by the Gariahat Indira Hawkers’ Union, at the Gariahat intersection, is among them.
“Every year, we organise a musical programme with artistes from Calcutta and Mumbai. This year, we are not doing it as a mark of respect for the doctor,” said Debraj Ghosh, general secretary of the union, which has over 2,000 members.
The Salt Lake Maitri Sangha Club, which holds its puja in Salt Lake’s CF Block, has built a smaller pandal as compared to last year.
Since the puja started, Maitri Sangha used to get Bollywood singers and actors to perform at the inauguration of the puja. This year, however, all cultural programmes have been scrapped and the inauguration was done with only rituals.
The only other time the club had done a similar thing was in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic had forced the hands of the organisers to have low-key celebrations.
“We are stunned, shocked and saddened. This year, we are just having the rituals of the puja and nothing else. We all want speedy justice to be served to the perpetrators of the crime,” said Sabyasachi Dutta, president of Salt Lake Maitri Sangha and the chairperson of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation.
Sweet shops were busy throughout Saturday. Laddoos and modaks were the most-selling items. But more than one confectioner said the sales were slightly lower than last year.
“There is a 10 per cent drop,” said Sudip Mullick, co-owner of Balaram Mullick and Radharaman Mullick.
Nilanjan Ghosh of Mithai said: “The sale is marginally lower than what it was last year.”