Kolkata's Durga Puja season has long been a showcase of scale, imagination and civic pride, but this year's pandals appear to have left a particularly strong impression on gallerist Sharan Apparao, who described them as a masterclass in collaboration and generosity. Her observations place the festival in a wider cultural frame: not merely as a religious observance, but as a living public arts ecosystem shaped by artists, artisans, neighbourhood committees, sponsors and visitors working in concert.
Public Art in Motion
Apparao's tour of some of the city's best-known pandals reflects a growing recognition that Durga Puja is now one of India's most significant annual cultural productions. Each installation is temporary, yet the effort behind it is immense. Months of planning, design, fabrication and coordination culminate in a few intense days of public viewing, with every structure serving as both devotional space and artistic statement. For a gallerist accustomed to evaluating visual language, material choices and curatorial intent, the pandals offered an unusually democratic exhibition model: art that is free, accessible and embedded in everyday urban life.
What stood out in her assessment was not only the visual ambition of the installations, but the spirit behind them. The best pandals, she suggested, are no longer defined solely by spectacle. They are built through a chain of shared labour and trust, where artists, craftsmen and organisers pool expertise to create something larger than any one signature style. That collaborative ethos has become one of Durga Puja's defining strengths, helping the festival move from local celebration to globally recognised cultural event.
Craft, Scale And Vision
The festival's creative economy is deeply layered. Traditional artisans continue to supply the handwork that gives pandals their texture and authenticity, while contemporary designers and art directors bring conceptual framing and spatial drama. The result is a hybrid form that can reference heritage, respond to current events or experiment with abstraction without losing its popular appeal. Apparao's remarks point to this balance as a key reason the pandals resonate so widely: they are rooted in community, yet open to innovation.
That openness matters in a city like Kolkata, where Durga Puja is both a devotional calendar event and a major civic moment. Streets are transformed, neighbourhoods compete in visual inventiveness and visitors move through the city as though traversing an open-air museum. In that environment, generosity is not only a moral quality but a practical one. It is visible in the willingness of organisers to share space, of artists to adapt ideas to collective needs and of audiences to engage with the work on its own terms.
Apparao's framing also speaks to a broader shift in how Indian cultural production is being understood. The line between fine art, design, craft and public installation has become increasingly porous, and Durga Puja pandals sit squarely at that intersection. Their significance lies not just in aesthetics, but in process: in the coordination required to realise them and in the social energy they generate once complete.
A Festival Beyond Ritual
For Kolkata, this is part of the enduring power of Durga Puja. The festival remains anchored in faith and tradition, yet its public expression has evolved into a platform for artistic experimentation and collective identity. Each year's pandals become a measure of the city's creative confidence, and this year, according to Apparao's response, that confidence was matched by a notable spirit of collaboration.
Her comments also reinforce why the festival continues to draw attention well beyond West Bengal. Durga Puja has become a cultural reference point for India's broader arts conversation, demonstrating how community-driven projects can achieve both emotional depth and visual sophistication. In Apparao's view, the best pandals are not simply impressive structures; they are evidence of what can happen when creative ambition is paired with generosity of effort.
As the season unfolds, Kolkata's pandals remain more than seasonal attractions. They are a reminder that public art can be participatory, that craftsmanship can be collective and that a festival can function as a citywide act of imagination. For a gallerist trained to see art in context, this year's Durga Puja appears to have offered exactly that: a vivid lesson in how collaboration gives cultural expression its scale, and generosity gives it meaning.