We walked a few minutes to discover the Abasar pandal – this was the first pandal where we saw a separate entrance called ‘jury entrance’. The top pandals are announced every year, and this adds to the competitive spirit between the organizations. The regular queue for visitors had a few people in line, but it wasn’t too long; was just a short wait. And there were some uniquely decorated lamps outside the pandal that kept Aaron busy with his photo shots. This was the first one where we saw a moving contraption that was part of the decoration outside the pandal. The lighting and colours gave a different feel to this pandal as we stepped into a beautiful corridor. The backdrop of the Goddess was cottony (literally filled with cotton fluffs) while the Goddess looked serene – the photo definitely doesn’t do justice to what we actually saw. The fluffy cotton added to the serenity. The organizers had to keep asking folks to move along – similar to what happens in crowded temples.
Walking out of Abasar, we stumbled into another pandal where there was no queue, and so we just walked straight in to be welcomed by the Goddess here with a large head.
(click on the images to view a larger version)
Kshitij, in his list of places, had suggested checking out the Olypub in Park Street. Since it was 7:25 pm, we thought of getting something to eat over there – and Park Street had a metro station. Since we were close to another metro station, we decided to try this mode of transportation. The metro was a bit crowded, and the train was packed to an extent – we still had some breathing space while standing, and the AC was working really well – despite the crowd, it felt cool inside. Took us about 20 minutes to get to Park Street – a lively street. Instead of the pub, we decided to go to the Peter Cat restaurant. It had a small entrance on the side road, but there were many people crowded outside – 8 pm was definitely a bad time to be at a restaurant and that too during the festival time.
Thanks to Google Maps, we found a top-rated place for rolls – later, Kshitij also mentioned the same name – Kusum rolls. Had a couple of egg rolls – it’s not a restaurant; more like a roadside shop; you order, get the food and either have it outside on the road or take it home. I’d never seen a menu with so many rolls – from egg to chicken to mutton to different combos of them. It was tasty; would have been nice to have been able to sit and eat leisurely!
The next stop was Mohd Ali Park’s pandal because that was also further down the same metro line we took. But while in the metro, Deb suggested holding off on this one because he said we could do it with him another day. And so we didn’t even step out of the metro station and took the metro in the opposite direction to get back to Park Street, where we hoped to have dinner. Peter Cat was still ruled out due to the crowd, but there was a tempting cafe we had seen near Peter Cat, and that’s where we landed at 9:30 pm. A place called Flurry’s Bakery – no waiting queue outside!
We learnt from Deb that this was a high-level English tea shop. Many shops on Park Street existed in the pre-independence years, and Flurry’s was also one of them – a tearoom started in 1922. We ordered their tea, which came in a typical English teapot, and a chef’s special fusion dish – fish surrounded by pasta and cheese all over, topped with plenty of mustard and a bun as a side. Mustard was a common ingredient in a lot of Bengali dishes. The dish was good but a bit salty. Since they also had a bakery, we tried a couple of items there. This was probably one of the few restaurants during the Puja time which was not crowded – their items are on the pricier side, but the ambience was good – a nice place to catch up with friends.
We spent close to an hour in the cafe, and during the break, we were also planning our next stop based on Kshitij’s inputs. I did see that the metro line went to Kalighat, and there was a Kalighat Temple which seemed like a major landmark in the city. Kshitij said it wouldn’t be open at night, and the neighbouring areas are shady, which we would be better off avoiding. And so we decided to head to Suruchi Sangha Club – supposed to have grand pandals rated among Kolkata’s top pandals every year. But this didn’t have any metro station nearby and was about 20 km from Park Street.
We took the metro to the last stop and walked it out through the alleys of Kolkata – though you have Google assisting you, it does feel reassuring when you have a few other people also walking in the same direction! We reached a crowded area and then just followed the winding queue to get to the Suruchi pandal.