One evening in Salt Lake

Salt Lake — Bidhannagar — carries more pujas in this dataset than any other neighbourhood in Kolkata, by a wide margin. They are block pujas: each lettered or numbered residential block runs its own, which means dozens of them within a few square kilometres.

The consequence is that the crowd is spread rather than concentrated. On the night when a famous south Kolkata ground has a ninety-minute queue, a Salt Lake block puja has a queue of eleven people and a very good fish fry stall.

Work one sector at a time. The blocks within a sector are close together and the roads between sectors are long, straight and dull — walking them wastes the evening.

The east–west Metro runs to Salt Lake and Sector V, and Karunamoyee and the sector roads are where buses and cabs will reach you. Get in by Metro, walk a sector, and get out the same way.

The one genuine difficulty is identification: blocks look alike after dark and the addresses are block letters rather than landmarks. Have the block written down before you set off, and use the route list on this site rather than trying to remember.

Domestic, in the best sense. These are neighbourhood pujas run by the people who live on the block, with a stage, a sound system, a competition of some kind, and half the residents sitting out in plastic chairs.

It is the easiest evening of the festival for anyone with small children or elderly parents, for the plain reason that there is room to move.