In Calcutta, the month of Ashwin—October—is marked by theannual autumnal ritual of Durga Puja. The Puja memorializes the mythicalevent of Hindu goddess Durga's victory over buffalo-demonMahishashura. Kalikapurana, a Hindu epic, describes Durgaas the embodiment of Shakti, the force that governs all of human existence.The collective energies of the Hindu gods Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma wentinto creating her. Armed with divine powers, she killed the buffalo-demonAshura, whom no other god or human could defeat. Week-long celebrations ofthe Puja in Calcutta relive the moment when Durga slayed Mahishashura.Variously described as a streetart festival, a festival to preserve villagefolk-art traditions in the city, and a heavily commercialized rendering of areligious event, the Puja is primarily expressed in street carnivals.Neighbourhood clubs erect pandals (decorated canopies) onthe sides of streets and in the city's parks. They festoon thesepandals with lights and play loud music. Inside the pandal, they place anidol of Durga and engage in elaborate rituals. City dwellers crowd thestreets all day and all night. They tour the pandals and offer their prayersto the deity.

Durga Puja did not always include magnificent pandals and publiccelebrations, however. In the late nineteenth century, it was a householdfestival. Hindu merchants worshipped the deity in the private recesses oftheir house. Their houses were enormous, containing an inner centralcourtyard. Surrounding the courtyard were dalaans (averandah or open hall for receiving visitors); they placed the idol on theseplatforms and engaged in day-long rituals. It was only in the twentiethcentury that the Puja evolved into a public festivity. Neighbourhood clubsreplaced merchants, organizing sarbojonin (public) DurgaPujas in the public spaces of Calcutta.

In this chapter, I argue that the transitions in Durga Puja celebrations,from a private worship to a public festival, undergirded a much bigger shiftin the socio-spatial configuration of Calcutta. This shift took shape at thelocal, everyday spaces of neighbourhoods or paras thatemerged as spatial units of a Hindu, and Bengali nation.