Mahalaya and the start of Devi Paksha

Mahalaya begins with a radio programme. Mahishasuramardini — Birendra Krishna Bhadra's chandipath, the songs, the invocation — has been broadcast by All India Radio in the small hours of Mahalaya morning since the 1930s, and Bengali households still set an alarm for it. Homes that have not owned a radio in twenty years will find something to play it on.

It is difficult to overstate how completely this fixes the start of the festival in people's heads. The pandals are not open, the idols are not finished, and the city is asleep — but from four in the morning on Mahalaya, it is Pujo.

Mahalaya closes Pitri Paksha, the fortnight for the ancestors, and opens Devi Paksha, the fortnight of the goddess. At dawn the ghats along the Hooghly fill with people standing waist-deep in the river offering tarpan to their dead.

If you are in Kolkata that morning, the northern ghats — Baghbazar, Ahiritola, Kumartuli — are where to be, and the light between five and seven is the best of the whole festival. Go to watch respectfully and stay out of the water; this is a rite for families, not a photo opportunity, whatever your camera thinks.

Traditionally the eyes of the idol are painted on Mahalaya — chokkhu daan, the giving of the eyes, done last and by the senior artisan. Until the eyes are in, the image is clay; afterwards it is not.

In practice the workshops of Kumartuli are on a production schedule and many idols have long since left for their pandals by Mahalaya morning. The rite survives, the timing has become elastic, and both of those things are true at once.

Almost nothing, in pandal terms. Mahalaya is a week before Shashthi; most pandals are still scaffolding and bamboo. What is worth doing is Kumartuli, where the workshops are at their most intense in exactly this week, and the riverside neighbourhoods at dawn.