Anand - Kumartuli

My rent a crowd special Kumartuli Hash was a huge success. We were 14 for breakfast and 16 to head to Kumartuli!

I had to personally pick up a Frenchman from Alipore and his banker. Another Frenchman, notice I’m not mentioning names promised me at Shisha that he would try and come but guess he didn’t recover from a late night. Barry on the other hand, an American who also speaks French, had just landed from Barcelona that morning at 5am and managed to join us at Anand. Peter and Rosie brought Mrs. Desai, an NRI based in the US, Tanya brought a lady from New Alipore, who if she joins us regularly solves my transport problems! Shradha, and Amit picked up their friend and was able to give me and Francois a lift to Kumartuli in their Toyota. Ed and Twila Miller, Jaap and Dirk are all back. And Shantanu was there to lead the way to Kumartuli.

Breakfast at Anand was a lot of fun. I had a rava idli for the first time. The paper dosas were so huge, we were sharing it across the table. Shantanu did a pop quiz on Kolkata landmarks as drawn on the paper place mats.

I then led the way to an 18th century palace in whose Thakur Dalan the potters were making the clay idols of Durga, Gasnesh, Laxmi, Saraswati, Kartik and Mahisasur. We took shelter in the covered courtyard, took pictures and listened to doc’s riveting explanations.

Then we walked in the narrow alleyways of Kumartuli peeping in to see the large and smaller idols. The others came back after the walk to buy some Shola/pith ornamental items. We saw the Biswakarma Puja Bisarjan / immersion. Biswakarma is the God of labour, standing with different tools in his hand beside an elephant. Every office and factory has this puja every year on 17th Sept. The bisarjan party arrives in trucks and they posed for us while descending the steps to immerse the idol. Doc then gave us his talk on symbolism.