Baghbazar Palli Puja O Pradarshani 2026: 99th Year Begins With Khuti Puja and a Theme Called "Drishyapot"
A red stage curtain doesn't usually greet you at a Khuti Puja. But that's exactly what was waiting at Gouri Mata Udyan on Baghbazar this Sunday morning — a giant, painted proscenium in deep crimson, with one word brushed across it in bold ochre strokes: দৃশ্যপট. Drishyapot. Scenery. Backdrop. The very thing a stage cannot exist without.
It turned out to be more than decoration. It was the announcement of a theme, and the opening scene of Baghbazar Palli Puja O Pradarshani's 99th year.
The Morning at Gouri Mata Udyan
The venue was Gouri Mata Udyan on Baghbazar , in the heart of North Kolkata, a locality that has watched almost a century of this particular puja's history unfold on its streets. There was no oversized spectacle to the ceremony itself — Khuti Pujas rarely need one. A bamboo pole, blessed and dressed for the season ahead, a small gathering of committee members and neighbourhood residents, some ritual chanting, and the quiet sense that something significant had just been set into motion. That's the whole ceremony, and yet it's the one moment every single para puja in the city treats as non-negotiable, year after year, decade after decade.
For Baghbazar Palli Puja O Pradarshani, this year's moment carried a little extra weight. Ninety-nine is not just a number on a banner — it's one year away from a full century, and you could sense that anticipation quietly humming under the otherwise low-key ceremony.
Marigolds, Leaves, and the Craft Nobody Talks About
Around the base, the ground had already turned into a carpet of its own — white and pink shiuli-adjacent blossoms mixed with stray marigold petals, scattered generously across the wet earth, the kind of detail that never makes it into a press release but tells you everything about how seriously the ritual was carried out. This is the part of a Khuti Puja that rarely gets photographed properly, and yet it's arguably the most labour-intensive: someone spent hours threading those garlands the night before, most likely women from the committee's families, working quietly while the rest of the neighbourhood slept.
What "Drishyapot – Rangamancher Ekal O Sekal" Actually Means
Now, back to that curtain. The theme announced for this 99th year is দৃশ্যপট – রঙ্গমঞ্চের একাল ও সেকাল, which translates loosely to "Scenery — Then and Now of the Stage." It's a theme built entirely around the world of theatre: the proscenium arch, the backstage machinery, the painted backdrops that Kolkata's jatra and natyashala traditions relied on long before LED screens existed, set in dialogue with how performance spaces look today.
The creative direction for this year's theme has been placed in the hands of Dipankar Ghosh, whose name is now attached to what promises to be one of North Kolkata's more conceptually layered pandals this season — a puja literally staged as a piece of theatre, with the pandal itself becoming both stage and story. Given Baghbazar's own historic proximity to Kolkata's early theatre houses along Beadon Street and Cornwallis Street (now Bidhan Sarani), the choice of theme feels less like a random creative pick and more like the club reaching into its own neighbourhood's cultural memory.
It's worth remembering that North Kolkata was, for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the actual epicentre of Bengali theatre — the Star Theatre, the Minerva, the Classic — all a short walk from where this khuti now stands. A theme like "Rangamancher Ekal O Sekal" isn't just visually promising; it's geographically appropriate.
A Puja Whose Age Tells Its Own Story
Reaching a 99th year is not something many community pujas manage, and it places Baghbazar Palli Puja O Pradarshani firmly among Kolkata's most senior sarbojanin celebrations — pujas that began before Independence, survived Partition-era disruptions, weathered decades of changing neighbourhood demographics, and are still standing strong enough to plan an elaborate theatre-themed pandal for their next edition.
North Kolkata as a whole carries this kind of weight easily. It's the same part of the city that's home to Kumartuli, the century-old potters' quarter where a large share of Kolkata's Durga idols — including, quite possibly, this club's own — are shaped by hand months in advance. If you haven't followed how that process unfolds each year, our ongoing coverage of Kumartuli is worth a visit; it's the quieter, upstream half of every story like this one.
Why the Timing Isn't a Coincidence
If you've been tracking Khuti Puja announcements across the city this season, you'll notice a pattern: an unusually large number of clubs, Baghbazar Palli Puja O Pradarshani included, chose to hold their ceremony in the window immediately following Rath Yatra. This isn't superstition dressed up as tradition — there's a fairly specific cultural logic behind it, one that ties the chariot festival directly to the ritual "start date" of Durga Puja preparations across Bengal.
We've written about exactly why Rath Yatra quietly functions as the unofficial clock-setter for the entire puja season, and it's a useful read alongside this update if you want to understand why so many khutis, this one included, went up around the same fortnight this year.
For readers who want to see how this compares with other clubs' openings this season — the banners, the themes, the different flavours of the same ceremony — our running Khuti Puja tracker is the place to follow along, updated as each new club makes its own preparations official.
What Comes Next for Baghbazar
With the khuti now planted and the theme publicly named, the real construction phase begins — bamboo delivery, the kathamo (structural frame) taking shape at Gouri Mata Udyan, and Dipankar Ghosh's team translating "Drishyapot" from concept sketches into an actual walk-through pandal experience. Expect the pace to pick up visibly through August, as it does for most established clubs at this stage.
Committee updates, when they come, tend to surface first on Baghbazar Palli Puja O Pradarshani's official Facebook page, which remains the fastest source for anything happening on the ground between now and the big reveal closer to Puja.
A Century Is Now Just One Year Away
There's something quietly moving about watching a 99-year-old institution choose a theme about "then and now" for what is effectively its own second-to-last milestone before the century mark. Whether that's intentional symbolism or simply a strong creative brief, it's hard to say — but it's the kind of detail that makes this particular Khuti Puja worth remembering beyond just another calendar entry in a long season of them.
We'll be back on the ground at Gouri Mata Udyan as the pandal takes physical shape, tracking how "Rangamancher Ekal O Sekal" moves from a painted curtain to a full structure. Until then, this is a live-tracked story — bookmark this page, or follow our complete Khuti Puja 2026 coverage for updates as North Kolkata's oldest pujas, one by one, get ready for their biggest season yet.
Image Credit: Baghbazar Palli Puja O Pradarshani
