Shyama Pally Shyama Sangha's 47th Year Gallops In: "Turongo" Banner Unveiled at Sulekha More's Khuti Puja
The horse comes first. Before you notice the calligraphy curling out of its mane like smoke, before you catch the small trishul-shaped logo tucked into the corner — you see the horse. White-maned, sketched in fine ink lines against a storm of ochre and crimson pigment, it stares out from the banner with one dark, almost human eye. Underneath it, in Bengali letters that seem to be galloping off the cloth themselves, is a single word: তুরঙ্গ — Turongo. The steed.
That banner went up at Sulekha More in Jadavpur, South Kolkata, on 19th July, when Shyama Pally Shyama Sangha performed the khuti puja that formally opens its 47th year of Durga Puja. No pandal yet, no idol, not even bamboo scaffolding — just a bare frame, a red-draped stage, and a theme name that tells you almost everything and almost nothing at the same time.
Why "Turongo"? What a Horse Theme Usually Means
In Bengal's puja iconography, the horse is rarely just decoration. It shows up in folk art as a symbol of forward motion, of restless energy, of a journey that refuses to stop halfway — think of the terracotta horses left as votive offerings at rural shrines, each one a wish sent galloping toward the divine. A club choosing Turongo as its theme name, then, isn't just picking a pretty animal to paint on a banner. It's making a statement about momentum: forty-six years behind them, and the 47th already sprinting ahead before Mahalaya has even been announced.
The artwork backs this reading up. The horse's mane doesn't just flow — it dissolves into the Bengali script itself, red and forest-green ink bleeding into the loops of the letters as though the animal and the word were sculpted from the same breath. It's a clever, layered piece of design, the kind that rewards a second and third look, and it suggests the committee is treating this year's concept as something with real artistic ambition behind it, not a last-minute label slapped onto a bamboo frame.
The Ground at Sulekha More
Shyama Pally sits in one of Jadavpur's older, more settled residential pockets, and Sulekha More itself is a name every South Kolkata local recognises instantly — a busy junction that has watched decades of pujas rise and fall around it. Shyama Pally Shyama Sangha has been part of that landscape since 1980, which puts this year's celebration at a full 46 years of continuous puja, now stepping into year 47. That's not a headline-grabbing round number like a 50th or a 75th, but for a neighbourhood club, unbroken continuity across nearly five decades is its own kind of achievement — a lot of clubs don't make it past their first ten years without folding into a bigger committee or losing their independent identity altogether.
The club's own crest, visible in the corner of the banner, is a red teardrop shape with a white trishul at its centre and three small dots trailing below it — a design that reads as both traditional and instantly identifiable, the sort of logo you'd recognise on a T-shirt from across a crowded pandal. Beneath it sits the year of establishment, 1980, and the club's rallying line for the season: করবো আমরা জয় — "We shall triumph." It's a short, punchy tagline, and paired with a galloping horse, the messaging lines up almost too neatly to be accidental.
Who's Behind the 47th Year
Every Durga Puja committee in Kolkata runs on a small army of volunteers wearing far too many hats at once, and Shyama Pally Shyama Sangha's banner lists its 2026 team in full:
- Sobhapoti (President): Sri Samar Ghosh
- Karjokori Sobhapoti (Working President): Sri Swapan Kumar Pal
- Soho-Sobhapoti (Co-Presidents): Sri Probal Dashgupta, Sri Barun Mitra
- Sompadok (Editor/Secretary): Sri Swapan Bardhan (Bapi), Sri Jayanta Pal
- Koshadhakhya (Treasurer): Sri Abhijit Roy
- Sohokari (Assistants): Sri Tanmoy Dutta, Sri Gourab Mitra, Sri Abhijit Malakar, Sri Arnab Das
- Jonoshomjog (Publicity/Outreach): Suvrata Dey, Abhirup Dasgupta
That's the administrative backbone — the people who keep permissions, budgets, and logistics running through eleven months of the year so that the twelfth can happen at all. But the name that actually appears largest on the banner, right under the theme title, belongs to a different team entirely: Sumi, Shubhadeep, Trisha, and Papan, credited as the creative force behind Turongo's concept and execution, with Raju and Soumyadip listed as collaborators. In an industry where credit for pandal art and theme direction is often handed out quietly or not at all, putting the design team's names in bold, right beneath the theme word itself, is a small but telling sign of how much value this committee places on its artists.
Khuti Puja: The Quiet Ritual That Starts Everything
If you're new to how Kolkata's Durga Puja calendar actually works, the khuti puja can look almost anticlimactic next to the spectacle of Panchami or Ashtami. It isn't. This is the ceremony where a bamboo pole — the "khuti" — is ritually planted and blessed on the puja ground, marking the community's formal go-ahead for the season's work to begin. Everything downstream of that moment, from the bamboo scaffolding rising over the coming weeks to the clay idols taking shape in the workshops of Kumartuli, is understood to start only after this small, quiet ritual is done.
Shyama Pally Shyama Sangha's decision to combine its khuti puja with a full theme-banner reveal is increasingly the norm rather than the exception this season — we've watched dozens of South and North Kolkata clubs use the same July-August window to do exactly this, turning what used to be a private, family-style ceremony into the community's first real look at the year's concept. You can follow that entire pattern unfolding across the city through our running Khuti Puja coverage, where Jadavpur sits alongside dozens of other pockets of Kolkata all quietly restarting their puja clocks at once.
What to Watch for Next
Right now, Turongo exists only as a name, a striking piece of banner art, and a bare frame at Sulekha More. The real work — the bamboo rising into shape, the clay idol taking form under Sumi, Shubhadeep, Trisha, and Papan's direction, the lighting and sound design that will eventually turn a static banner into a walk-through experience — is still ahead. That's exactly what makes the khuti puja stage worth paying attention to: it's a promise, not the finished picture, and the gap between the two is where all the anticipation lives.
For a club heading into its 47th year with a theme this confidently designed, expect the next update — likely the pandal's structural work or a fuller concept reveal — to land sometime as Mahalaya approaches. We'll be tracking Shyama Pally Shyama Sangha's progress alongside every other Jadavpur-area puja this season, right here under our Durga Puja 2026 coverage.
Follow the club directly on their official Facebook page for real-time updates from the Sulekha More puja ground, and keep checking back with us as Turongo takes shape between now and Sharadiya.
Have photos or updates from Shyama Pally Shyama Sangha's puja ground? Send them our way through our Contact page — community-submitted coverage is always welcome.
