Durga Puja (worship of Durga) is a major religious festival for Hindus in West Bengal, Bihar, Tripura, Odisha, Assam, Mithila and other parts of India and Bangladesh. In the rest of India, it coincides with Navaratri and Dussehra, and with Dashain in Nepal, all of which signify the victory of good over evil. Durga Puja is celebrated in autumn (Sharad), in the months of September or October. In Kolkata, Durga Puja was first organised in 1610 CE by the Sabarna Roy Chowdhury family at their ancestral home at Barisha. They were zamindars (hereditary landowners with the right to collect tax) during the Mughal period and held zamindari rights of Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kolkata villages, which were acquired by the British East India Company (BEIC). The BEIC merged the three villages to establish Kolkata. As the capital of the British Empire, Kolkata emerged as a major trading port, and enterprising Bengalis migrated to the city and made their fortune in business, trade, banking, and working for the BEIC as administrators, civil servants and zamindars. These nouveau riche Bengalis settled in Sutanuti, in what is today’s North Kolkata, where they built palatial mansions along Chitpur Road, the only arterial road of the city 300 years ago. Thus, these Bengali families were the symbols of aristocracy and were considered the foundation of Kolkata’s haute society and high culture. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they came to be known as bonedibari in colloquial Bengali; bonedi, derived from buniyadi, meaning foundation, and bari meaning house/family. After centuries of Islamic rule, protection under the British guns of Fort William allowed elite Bengali Hindus to express their religiosity more publicly, and they organised grand festivals, spending astronomical sums of money. Durga Puja celebrations became increasingly popular in bonedi baris of Kolkata, and, for this purpose, a thakur dalan is a common feature in all these mansions. Several weeks before the festiva
