Genesis - soumya.org

The Small Pleasures Of Life

Zoom in...A chilly morning in November. A small village nestled in the Dhauladhar Ranges of Himachal. A small tea stall.  A glass of hot steaming tea and some really buttery biscuits. No internet connection or laptop for 3 days. An amazing perspective on what life can be...

Pandal Hopping At Midnight

Traffic in Calcutta during Durga Puja is horrendous and comes to a standstill from 2 PM to 12 AM. The solution...rent a car, leave home at 12 AM and return home at 5 AM! Trust Bengali ingenuity for thousands of other people to come up with the same idea... a phenomenon affectionately known as pandal hopping. Here are some snapshots of Calcutta's pandals on the night of Bijoya Dashami. I literally have never seen anything like this in my life. What other culture would put in so much effort to build such magnificence for such a temporal life...

Durga Durga

Five days of complete mayhem and every Bengali's dream. This was my first ever Durga Puja in Calcutta. The people, the food, the lights, the noise and the creativity....People have taken the theme of concepts to a whole new level and each locality vies with another to have the best pandal in Calcutta.Here is a sampling (50 is literally the minimum I could cut it down to) of the best in the city. Keep in mind each one is a temporary structure created for 5 days...Amazing is the only word to describe it...