Homely tribute to Devi and craft revives Bengal’s traditional shola art for Durga Puja

It all started during the Covid lockdown in 2020, when I made my first basic Durga idol out of clay and scraps from online shopping packages. Since we couldn’t go out for Puja, I wanted to create a little Puja ambience at home.

And ever since, I look at all the little things about Puja and wonder how I can incorporate them into my own little world. This year, my curiosity took me to an older Bengal, by making an idol and a mandap entirely out of shola.

The idea grew from my interest in the many visual forms of Durga beyond the familiar daker shaaj and sholar shaaj. In some older depictions of the goddess, I have noticed how the attire and ornamentation were modelled directly in clay, rather than dressing the idol in a separate sari and adding elaborate accessories.

Another detail that caught my attention was the goddess’s mount. In several older family puja traditions, the lion was depicted as a ghora-mukhi simha — a horse-faced lion, that I tried out this time. The idol would be framed by the chala, whose characteristic inverted boat-shaped curve draws from Bengal’s traditional architectural vocabulary.

My intention was to bring together these lesser-seen details in my own interpretation of how Durga puja might have looked once. Today, shola is most readily associated with the white ornamental adornments of Durga, as well as ceremonial headpieces used in weddings. Yet the material was also used to create elaborate mandaps, wedding canopies and other ceremonial structures in traditional households. These intricate constructions required considerable skill and patience, and the tradition has become increasingly uncommon. In fact, very few artisans continuing to practise this specialised form of shola work. So I set out to make the entire mandap from the material.

I am not a professional at this so there may be things I missed or interpreted differently. But as someone who feels deeply connected to the craft, this is my way of imagining a puja from an earlier Bengal, by taking these little fragments of how things were once made and portraying them through my work.