Making idols for Chennai for over two decades

“I have been travelling to Chennai for 24 years now,” said Pal, who makes idols at the premises of The Bengal Association, T Nagar. He said his idols are delivered to Korattur, Anna Nagar, Apollo Hospitals and even to Kochi (in Kerala), among several other places.

Accompanied by two co-workers, Amit Kumar Pal (37) and Ramesh Malik (43), Pal arrived in August this year and his work began with the making of Ganesha idols for Vinayakar Chaturthi. Thereafter, he made Vishwakarma idols as well, while work on the idols for Durga Puja, Kali Puja, Lakshmi Puja and Saraswati puja is still on.

Pal delivers all his idols by October and returns home to manage his work at his factory, at his native Baidyabati in Hooghly, ahead of Jagatdhatri Puja, which is a 10-day grand celebration near Chandannagar.

“Nothing much has changed except the rise in the number of pujas in Chennai,” said Pal. Recalling his earlier years in the city, the idol-maker said, “Earlier, I was called to make only one Durga idol. However, now I make several idols for many associations and organisations.” He added that he even get requests from families to make Lakshmi and Saraswati idols.

Procuring many of the raw materials required for idol-making is a difficult task in Chennai, said Jiban. “I place the orders from here and they send those from Kolkata via courier. It usually takes a couple of days to reach Chennai,” he told DT Next.

Among the raw materials sent from Kolkata are clay from shores of river Ganga (an essential ingredient in the making of any idol) and the ornaments and clothes sported by the idols. “The clay we procure from the markets here are not suitable for idol making. It cracks after drying. So we apply clay from shores of Ganga over the local clay,” he added.

Explaining the difficulty to procure bamboos to make the basic structure of the idols, he said, “Here, we use tree branches to make the structure, instead of bamboos, which is the tradition we have grown up following.”

Pal said he has spent 12 years at Kumortuli, Kolkata’s potters’ colony, to learn the art of clay modelling and idol-making. Thereafter, a confident Pal travelled across several parts of the northern states to make idols. “After working at several factories in West Bengal, I travelled to Gorakhpur (in Uttar Pradesh) and Jabalpur (in Madhya Pradesh) to make idols there,” he said.

Reflecting upon the changing trends of puja, as compared with those in Kolkata, Pal said theme pujas (puja decoration based on a certain theme) are yet to capture the trend in Chennai. “Pujas here are organised in halls that have space restrictions. Working on a theme is easier as it does not follow the traditional postures of the idols. But, we only get requests for traditional and conservative idols here,” he said.