Jagat Mukherjee Park Khuti Puja 2026: The 90th Year Officially Begins

Some evenings just feel different. Last Sunday evening, as the sky over Shobhabazar slowly turned that particular shade of Kolkata-monsoon grey, a small crowd gathered at Jagat Mukherjee Park for a ceremony that lasts barely half an hour but sets the tone for the next three months of a neighbourhood's life. The Khuti Puja of Jagat Mukherjee Park Durgotsav has now been completed, officially marking the beginning of the 90th year of one of North Kolkata's most cherished Durga Pujas.

If you read our earlier piece on the banner reveal and Khuti Puja announcement, you already know this day was coming. Now it has actually happened — and we were there to soak in every bit of it, so let's walk through what unfolded.

A Ceremony Rooted in Simplicity

Walk past any grand Durga Puja pandal in October and you'll see lights, crowds, and spectacle on a massive scale. But Khuti Puja is the opposite of all that — and that contrast is exactly what makes it so moving.

At Jagat Mukherjee Park, the setup was refreshingly modest: a white cloth spread on the ground, a few banana leaves holding flowers, vermillion, and offerings, a small brass pot, and a garlanded coconut wrapped in a red cloth resting quietly at one corner. No stage lighting, no dhak yet, no crowds of ten thousand — just a priest, a handful of committee elders, some curious neighbourhood children peeking through the tent flaps, and a quiet sense that something sacred was underway.

This is the beauty of Khuti Puja that first-time visitors often miss — it is deliberately understated because its job is not to entertain, but to bless the ground before the real work of building a pandal begins.

The Bamboo Pole That Started It All

At the centre of the ceremony stood the khuti itself — a tall bamboo pole, wrapped from base to top in a spiral of orange marigold and white tuberose garlands, with a small framed image of the goddess tied near its crown. This pole now marks the exact spot where, over the coming weeks, an entire pandal structure will rise around it.

Watching the priest tie the first thread around that bamboo, you understand why generations of Kolkata families treat this moment with such reverence. It is symbolic, yes, but it is also strangely literal — this is genuinely where construction begins. Everything that follows — the bamboo scaffolding, the cloth walls, the lighting rigs, the idol platform — will be built quite literally around this one consecrated pole.

If you want to see how this same ritual has played out at other historic pujas across the city, our complete Khuti Puja coverage archive is a good place to explore more.

The Faces Behind This Year's Vision

One detail that stood out at the venue was a striking large-format sketch-style banner featuring two faces rendered in warm sepia tones against a backdrop of Durga motifs — the visual identity chosen for this year's preparations. The banner names the key creative forces steering the 90th year:

• Planning and Management: Sri Avijit Ghatak
• Idol Crafting (Matri Rupayan): Sri Amol Pal

Featuring the artists themselves on the banner, rather than just the deity or a generic theme graphic, is a lovely touch. It puts a human face to the months of invisible labour that go into every Durga Puja — the sketching, the bamboo-binding, the clay-shaping — long before a single visitor ever steps inside the finished pandal.

Idol artisans in particular deserve far more spotlight than they usually get. The name Amol Pal will now be closely associated with how Maa Durga looks at Jagat Mukherjee Park this year, and if his previous work is anything to go by, this is a name worth watching as the idol slowly takes shape in the months ahead. We've written more broadly about the artisans who shape Kolkata's Durga idols in our Kumartuli special coverage, which is worth a read if you enjoy going behind the scenes of how these idols come to life.

The Committee's Continuing Legacy

Organised, as always, under ১ নং ওয়ার্ড সাধারণ দুর্গোৎসব ও প্রদর্শনী (Ward No. 1 Sadharan Durgotsav O Pradarshani), this Puja has stood at Jagat Mukherjee Park in Shobhabazar for nine full decades now — a stretch of time that has quietly witnessed the city change around it while the ritual itself has remained constant.

There is something worth reflecting on here. Ninety Khuti Pujas means ninety different committees of volunteers, across nearly a century, have stood on this same patch of ground and done exactly what happened last Sunday — tied garlands to a bamboo pole and asked for blessings before the season's work began. Traditions like this are what give North Kolkata's Puja culture its unmistakable depth; it isn't just about a ten-day festival, it's about an unbroken thread of community memory.

What the Crowd Told Us

What struck us most on the ground wasn't the ritual itself, but the crowd around it. Despite the drizzle-heavy evening and the muddy patches underfoot, dozens of people — families, elderly residents, college students with their phones out, even a few visibly emotional long-time volunteers — packed in close around the tent to watch. Several were seen photographing the newly unveiled banner, and a fair number were simply standing quietly, watching the priest work, phones down, just present in the moment.

That is, honestly, the real magic of Khuti Puja season in Kolkata. It doesn't need grandeur to draw a crowd. People show up simply because they cannot imagine the coming months without being part of this beginning.

From Here to Mahalaya: What Comes Next

With the Khuti Puja behind them, the Jagat Mukherjee Park committee now moves into the long, quiet middle stretch of Puja preparation — the part most visitors never see. Over the coming weeks, expect:

• Bamboo scaffolding to rise steadily around the consecrated khuti
• Structural framework and pandal design work to begin in earnest through the monsoon
• Idol-making progress at Amol Pal's workshop, likely with periodic updates shared by the committee
• A full theme reveal, expected closer to the festive season

We'll be tracking every one of these milestones, so keep this page bookmarked, or better yet, follow our Durga Puja 2026 updates section, where we'll be posting fresh coverage as Jagat Mukherjee Park — and other major pujas across the city — move deeper into their preparation season.

Why We Keep Covering These "Small" Moments

We know a Khuti Puja report might feel like a small story compared to the ten-day spectacle of October. But at Durga Puja of Kolkata, we genuinely believe these quieter rituals are where the real soul of the festival lives. Anyone can enjoy a finished pandal for an evening. Following a Puja from its very first bamboo pole to its final Visarjan gives you something deeper — a real relationship with the community behind it.

Ninety years, one bamboo pole, two artists' faces on a banner, and a small crowd standing in the rain to witness it all — that's Jagat Mukherjee Park's Durga Puja 2026, off to a beautiful start.

For real-time photos and further committee announcements, follow their official Facebook page, and don't forget to catch up on our previous coverage of the banner reveal if you missed it.

Follow Durga Puja of Kolkata for continuing ground reports from Jagat Mukherjee Park and every major Puja across the city, all season long.

Image Credits: prosenjit.pujorporibar. Used with express permission. All rights reserved by the original copyright holder.