Kolkata and its suburbs are witnessing a human wave from eight to eighty. People are forming a beeline making their way to the Puja pandals on the day of Mahasathi. In the morning, the office goers are having a trying time as pandal hoppers too board buses and the metros and hit city streets to visit the pandals.
Two days before the Puja started, cyclone Titli which made a land fall near Odisha -Andhra Pradesh coast, and as a result heavy rainfall was predicted in West Bengal.
People did not want to take a chance and started pandal hopping since Panchami.
The sky was clear and sunny, making it for people an opportunity to visit all the pandals. From theme puja to traditional puja, people are not giving a break to anything.
From south to north all the puja pandals were overcrowded. Naktala Udayan Sangha, Ekdalia Evergreen, Ballygunge Cultural, Desopriya Park, Chetla Agrani, Suruchi Sangha, Sree Bhumi sporting and many famous puja pandals in south Kolkata received record-breaking crowd.
Though the office goers had to sit inside the office and spend their “Mahasathi”, school and college goers visited the pandals in full mood. Selfies, groupfies were posted on social media immediately. Social media flooded with ‘check in’ puja pandals.
In North Kolkata, crowd rushed from Bagbazar Sarbajanin, to Aheritola, College Squre to Md. Ali Park, Santosh Mitra square.
Volunteers and police had a tough day to manage the crowd. The Puja committees are expecting record breaking crowd this year witnessing the rush in “mahashashti”.
From Chinese to Mughlai, Bengali to Thai, Bengali’s Durga puja is incomplete without food. Restaurants witnessed long queue. Street food though gave a tough competition to the restaurants.
A list of movies released this week making the theatres houseful. Last minute shopping is also on. People who did not get time to buy clothes and accessories are completing their shopping during their pandal hopping.
Metro, Trains, buses were fully crowed on the day of “Mahasashti.”
State government has announced to run extra buses and trains for the convenience of the pandal hoppers on the days of the festival.
Kolkata Metro Corporation too is running extra metros to manage crowds.