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...
Long back Mahatma Gandhi advised us ‘Do not listen to bad, do not see bad and do not speak bad’ ( "Bura Mat Suno..Bura Mat Dekho...Bura Mat Kaho" !). Now in modern hyper competitive times we are helpless about the first two don’ts. And persistent exposure to the first two makes us lose the third too! We cannot help but listen to or watch an endless stream of ‘bad’—all around us from home to the streets, in the newspapers and news channels, in the television serials and in the movies and at every act we have to do like walking praying jogging or driving—everyday and every step of our existence. Such continuous barrage of ‘bad’ is fast making us speak and utter a lot of ‘bad’ too. We are becoming doubtful and suspicious of everything around us and we are learning to blurt it out freely and openly. The main ‘bad’ drive comes from politics. We are hounded constantly by all sorts of stories being hammered into us forcing us to form our opinions or go on changing these and finally ...