Sandhi Puja, the 48 minutes at the hinge

Sandhi means junction. The rite occupies the last twenty-four minutes of Ashtami and the first twenty-four of Navami — forty-eight minutes fixed by the almanac, the same for every puja in the city, and not movable by anybody for any reason.

It marks the moment in the story when Durga, fighting Mahishasura, is attacked from behind by Chanda and Munda and turns to destroy them — the moment the goddess becomes Chamunda. That is why the mood of it is nothing like the rest of the festival.

108 lamps lit together. 108 lotuses offered. The dhak at full volume and, in many pujas, conches and kansor bells until the sound is physical. In some bonedi bari pujas there is a token sacrifice — of a fruit, a gourd or sugarcane rather than an animal, in almost every case in the city today.

It ends abruptly, because the window closes. Within a few minutes the crowd is moving again and it is Navami.

The timing is published by every committee and identical across them, so pick a puja near where you already are — you will not get across the city between one and the next. A small para puja or a bonedi bari courtyard gives you far more of it than a headline pandal, where you will be a hundred metres back behind a barricade.

Get there twenty minutes early. Once it starts nobody is going to let you push forward, and rightly.

It is worth knowing that the timing is the same across the city, so the whole of Kolkata is doing this simultaneously. Standing anywhere outdoors at that moment, you can hear it happening in three directions at once — which is an experience of its own even if you never get inside a pandal.

Most of Durga Puja is warm: a homecoming, a family, sweets and lights and a great deal of laughing. Sandhi Puja is not warm. It is the point in the story where the goddess turns, and the rite is built to feel like that — fast, loud, and slightly frightening.

The lamps and the lotuses are counted rather than approximate. The sound is deliberate. In older household pujas the rite retains elements — the sacrifice, the specific offerings — that the community pujas have simplified or dropped, and where those survive the difference in atmosphere is stark.

If somebody in Kolkata tells you there is one thing to see in the five days and they are not talking about a pandal, this is what they mean.

Do not plan to move during it. The forty-eight minutes are fixed, the streets around any puja are at their fullest, and stepping out of a packed courtyard halfway through is neither easy nor polite.

Photography from the edge only, no flash, and put the camera down for the lamps. See the photography etiquette guide.