CUTTACK: Cuttack’s silver sheen is getting brighter with every Durga Puja. This year, four new Durga Puja committees in the city will bedeck their deities with silver tableau (Chandi Medha). They are Nima Sahi, Nimchouri, Mohamadia Bazaar and Kafla Bazaar puja committees, taking the number of committees in the elite Chandi Medha club to 32. The tableaux are an example of the exquisite silver filigree work that Cuttack is famed for.
At Kafla Bazaar where Durga Puja is a six-decade-old tradition, 280 kg of silver has been used to create the backdrop and jewellery for the Mother Goddess, goddesses Saraswati and Laxmi, Lord Ganesh, Kartikeswar and Mahisasura. The tableau, which is 22 ft tall and 13 ft wide, is being crafted by veteran filigree artist Biswanath Dey.
Credited to have also created the Choudhury Bazaar and College Square Chandi Medhas, Dey started the work earlier this year with a team of 10 filigree craftspersons. The tableau has been designed by a local artist Kedarnath Behera. “The puja here is done in Bengali tradition and was started by locals in 1960. Since previously Zari Medha was used to decorate the goddess, we decided to make the Chandi Medha this year. Additionally, new silver jewellery for the deity and the other subsidiary deities have been made,” said Tapas Praharaj, secretary of the puja committee.
Similarly at Mohamadia Bazaar, 1.5 quintal of silver has been used to create a 15-ft-high and 13-ft-wide tableau for the goddess. The puja celebration began with clay idols of Hara-Parvati in 1996 by one Rajkishore Agarwal. “There were two sahis then - Upara and Tala Mohamadia Bazaar. When the two sahis became one, community puja began at the pandal with the installation of the idol of goddess Durga by locals in 2006,” said the secretary of the committee Lingaraj. The committee started work on the silver tableau in 2016 and expected to have it ready by 2020. However, with the outbreak of Covid-19 work was stopped midway.
“Last year when everything was normal, we resumed the work and completed it this year,” said Surendra Behera, local filigree artisan who has crafted the tableau. At Nima Sahi, the 15-ft-high tableau for the Mother Goddess has been decorated with exquisite filigree sculptures of peacocks, sun, lotus, kalasha, kadamba flowers and creepers, made from 65 kg silver. And at Nimchouri, the puja committee has used 1.5 quintal silver to make the backdrop for the idols of Hara-Parvati.
All the four puja committees claimed the tableaux have been entirely handmade and no machine has been used in preparing them. They have spent between Rs 1 crore and Rs 1.5 crore to prepare the tableaux.