Pandal Hunter

The story

Pujo seen properly is Pujo planned properly.

Your Pujo starts in August.

That's when the first themes leak: a committee posts a teaser, an artist's name turns up in the paper, a replica rumour goes round the group chat. You start a list. By Mahalaya the list is a spreadsheet, with tabs for North, South, Salt Lake and Behala, a column for the nearest Metro station, and a colour code nobody else understands.

The city makes this hard on purpose. Kolkata has around three thousand community Pujos, and the good ones are scattered across forty kilometres of traffic, barricades and one-way diversions that change every evening. Ordinary people pick a side of the city and give up on the rest. You don't give up.

You go early. This year nothing opens before Mahalaya, so the sweep begins the day after: the famous replica at 11 am on Chaturthi, before the barricades, before the queue, before anyone has posted it. You go North by Blue Line and walk between the stations, because once the city fills up, feet are faster than anything with wheels. Three committee secretaries know you by face. They know you by your sneakers.

Your friends call it an obsession. You call it respect. Somebody spent six months building that pandal out of bamboo and clay cups and light. The least anyone can do is see it.

By Navami you've seen more pandals than most people see in ten years of Pujos, and you remember them: the ones everyone saw, and the tiny one in a Behala lane with a theme about a disappearing trade that nobody else will ever know existed.

Feluda had his magajastra, his brain-weapon. You have a Metro card, a charged phone and a spreadsheet. The case is the same every year: find everything. You always solve it.