Kumartuli, and how a Durga idol is made

Kumartuli is a few lanes near the river in north Kolkata, barely wide enough for two people to pass, packed with open-fronted workshops. The name means potters' quarter, and it has been that since the eighteenth century. Idols leave here for the rest of Kolkata, for the rest of India, and — packed into crates — for Bengali communities on every continent.

It is a working district rather than an attraction. There is no entrance, no ticket and no tour; you walk in, and you get out of the way of people carrying things.

It starts with a frame of bamboo and straw, bound tight with jute rope, roughly the shape of the finished figure. Over that goes a coarse clay mixed with rice husk, then a finer clay from the Hooghly, then a final smooth layer worked with the hands until the surface will take paint.

The whole thing dries slowly and cracks if it dries fast, which is why an idol-maker's worst news in September is rain. Then come the paint, the sari, the ornaments — often shola pith, the white spongewood carved into crowns and jewellery — and the weapons in the ten hands.

The eyes are last. Chokkhu daan is done by the senior artisan, usually before dawn, and it is the only part of the process nobody hurries.

The three or four weeks before Mahalaya are the best time, and the last ten days before it are the most intense — every workshop lit, every idol at a different stage, and the finished ones going out on handcarts. During the five days of Pujo itself the quarter is comparatively quiet and has its own pujas, which are worth seeing precisely because everybody else is somewhere else.

Go in the morning. Ask before photographing a person; nobody minds a picture of an idol and quite a lot of people mind a lens in their face while they work. If you want to buy something, the small shola work and the miniature idols are made for exactly that.