Durga Puja is arguably the world's largest open-air art festival. Every October, over 40,000 temporary installations rise across Kolkata — each one a commissioned work designed by some of Bengal's finest craftsmen, constructed over months, and inhabited for exactly five days before being dismantled. The idol at the centre of each installation is immersed in the river on the final day. Nothing is preserved. Nothing is meant to be.
UNESCO recognised Durga Puja as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2021. What that recognition makes clear is something Kolkatans have always known — this is not just a religious festival. It is one of the most significant cultural events anywhere in the world, and it happens every year.
The problem with ephemeral art
The impermanence of Durga Puja is central to its philosophy. But it creates an obvious documentation problem. Installations that cost crores to build, themes that took a year to research and execute, artistry that draws millions of visitors — all of it disappears within a week. What remains is whatever photographs exist, scattered across hard drives and social media feeds, with no systematic record of what was made, when, by whom, or why.
This is the gap Durga Puja Chronicles was built to address.
What the archive does
The site documents Kolkata's Durga Puja from 1995 to the present — pandals, themes, localities and artistry across three decades. It is searchable by year, by pandal, by area, and by theme category. You can trace how a single committee's aesthetic evolved over twenty years, or compare how different neighbourhoods interpreted the same cultural moment.
The aim is to make the festival's history explorable year-round, not just during the five days it exists.
The technical side
The stack is straightforward — Flask, PostgreSQL, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, photos on S3. The focus was always on the archive itself rather than the infrastructure: getting the data structured well enough that it stays useful as it grows, and keeping the interface fast and simple enough that the photographs remain the primary experience.
Why this kind of project matters now
As global interest in Durga Puja grows following UNESCO recognition, there is increasing demand for serious documentation — not just coverage, but context. Which pandals have been defining forces in the festival's artistic evolution? What have the themes said about Bengali culture at different points in time? How has the craft changed?
These are questions a well-maintained archive can answer. That is what we are building.
durgapujachronicles.com
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