Special events to keep crowds at puja pandals

With corporatisation and organised marketing of the mega-budget Durga Puja on the rise, the five-day festive season is no longer just about pandal hopping or shopping. What is more time consuming for the puja organising committees and sponsors is increasingly the activities and events lined up during the five festive days.

Organisers of Durga Pujas in the city also feel that competitions and events help them raise money from sponsors.

The magnitude of the celebrations can be gauged from the lavish budget some of the puja committees boast of. For example, Shiv Mandir has a fund of approximately Rs 40 lakh, while the B-Block Puja Samiti estimates their collections around Rs 35 lakh. The Puja Samiti in Matri Mandir has a budget of Rs 25 lakh. Also, the footfall experienced at the pandals has only grown every year. Suman Chatterjee, secretary, Navapalli Puja Samiti, says, "Huge crowd throng the pandal on all days of the puja. There are nearly 40,000 people in the pandal at any given point of time.''

The front-runners in organising such events and sponsoring them are the media companies like Times of India and Telegraph. For instance, The Times of India (TOI) Pujo Barir Shera Pujo content, presented by Uco Bank with Accord Advertising as the outdoor partner, claims that the younger generation has almost given up pandal-hopping, now choosing to participate in the community puja instead. Category 1 will consider housing complexes with 100 flats or more, instead of 60 till last year. Category II is for those with fewer apartments. The total prize money has also been increased from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 5 lakh. Prize money of Rs 2 lakh and Rs 1 lakh will be awarded to Category I and Category II winners respectively. 50 special appreciation awards worth Rs 4,000 each will also be given across both categories starting this year.

A similar event-schedule for housing complex pujas is maintained by media group The Telegraph Hand in Hand, in association with Bajaj Almond Drops Hair Oil, which hosts events and competitions in over a hundred apartment blocks in the city. A host of cultural activities and competitions over five festive days will be organised.

Community pujas, on the other hand, harp more on cultural programmes and events. According to Anjan Mukherjee, convenor for Durgotsav 2008 at Shiv Mandir in Kolkata, "We are bringing Rezwana Chowdhury Bonya and Sraboni Sen from Kolkata and they will render Rabindra Sangeet.'' Debashis Saha, head of the organizing committee of Matri Mandir in Safdarjung Enclave, informed that Matri Mandir is organizing a Dhanuchi Naach competition on Mahanavami in which winners will be awarded with five-star hotel vouchers.