Durga Puja just a month away, but joy missing in idol-makers’ quarters

As celebrations are expected to be muted, they are the hardest hit among those who give shape to the festival

Durga Puja is a little over a month away, a time when — in normal times — Kumartuli throbs with activity and idol-makers are easily irritated by intrusions in the form of curious onlookers and photographers. But this year, they seem to have all the time in the world. Indrajit Pal, in fact, offers to lead this reporter to his workshop — a luxury usually unthinkable of during peak season at this riverside artisans’ colony in north Kolkata — to show off the idols he is specially creating for the Durga Puja of 2021. “Last year, I had depicted the coronavirus in black because people were in the dark about it,” says Mr. Pal, “but this year I am going to depict the delta variant, that too in steel grey, because we are no longer ignorant about the virus and at the same time yet to vanquish it.”