Kumartuli or Kumortuli is located in the northern part of the city of Kolkata . The locality is a traditional habitat of the potters for nearly three hundred years. The potters or the artisans or the artists settled here during the restructuring of the Kolkata colonial region by the British East India Company . Earning a livelihood by making earthen pots and utensils first they gradually shifted to the making of the idols of Gods and Goddesses for various festivals round the year. With increasing demand and quality of their creations over time the artisans became famous and Kumartuli came to be known as the hub of idol makers supplying thousands of idols, particularly of Goddess Durga , to whole of the state of West Bengal and to NRIs of around 90 countries across the globe. At least three months before Durga Puja , the biggest festival of West Bengal and one of the biggest across Eastern India, more than five hundred workshops come alive with hyper activity day and night. Fir...
Today, the 10 th of October, 2011, 8.10am—the end of a momentous musical era. Indian Ghazal king Jagjit Singh breathed his last at a Mumbai hospital following a brain hemorrhage he suffered on September 23. He had been put on life supporting system and though there were signs of improvements in between death prevailed finally. Jagjit Singh had a strong, soulful, filling and soothing voice supported by powerful melody that lingered in the auditorium and on the spellbound listeners. Along with his singer wife Chitra Singh Jagjit Singh created his own Ghazal genre that almost matched the popularity of the film music genre. His forays into playback singing and music direction for several mainstream Hindi movies and television serials heightened his music’s mass appeal even further. The singer-composer couple also created history in Indian music by using the first ever digital multi-track recording for their CD Beyond Time (1987)— India ’s first digitally recorded album. We did our school ...