Durga Puja’s money stream returns

After last year's letdown, corporate sponsorship surges across West Bengal's 45,000 pandals

- ISHITA AYAN DUTT

The revellers are out on the streets, traffic has slowed to a crawl, and after hurried repairs, pandals are glowing with lightsKolkata is back to celebrating Durga Puja, shrugging off the deluge of rain.

A torrential downpour struck Kolkata early Tuesday, as a 5-7-kilometre cloud column released 252 millimetres of rain over seven hours, just days before the city's biggest festival. With several pandals flooded or partially damaged, organisers raced against time to restore them.

Abhijit Mazumder of the Singhi Park Durga Puja Committee said the lower panel of the pandal was damaged. "The decorators and artists had to be brought in for urgent repairs."

Much of the pandal structure at Samaj Sebi Sangha is made of iron. But the labourers who were working there had to be moved, said Arijit Maitra, general secretary of the committee. Yet, as the water mostly receded by Wednesday evening, Kolkata swung back into carnival mode.