300-yr-old folk art to adorn Durga pandal in Mumbai

Thirty-year-old Moloy Chitrakar brushes with the pace and breeziness with which a toddler does his paint book. But his work is far from being off-hand; the lotuses are distinctly uniform. Chitrakar is one of the five persons who have come from Bengal to do the artwork on the Durga mandal in Powai.

Belonging to the ‘Chitrakar’ clan at Noya village in Midnapore, West Bengal, the five specialise in the about 300-year-old folk art, popularly known as Pat. “The art is dying in Bengal. Since we are having a traditional village set up for the Puja, we called them here,” says Supriyo Lahiri, cultural secretary of the Powai Bengali Welfare Association.

In Bengal, Pat is done on scrolls and the story on them is explained through dance and song. In Mumbai,  the art form will be restricted to the paintings on the pandal. Each of them will describe the mythological and folk tales of goddess Durga and her family.

“On the inside walls, we have stories of the fight between Ganga and Durga,” says Chandan Chitrakar, 32, who heads the artists’ team. Though he has a Hindu name, Chandan and his team members are Muslims.

They take their surnames from their occupation. Other Muslims in the village have reportedly taken umbrage at their artwork of Hindu deities. “The artists’ community has ostracised them. They have a separate mosque,” says Lahiri.