Bonedi Bari-r Pujo: Experience The Gilded Allure Of Kolkata's Founding Families' Durga Pujas

Kolkata during Durga Puja is a city of carnivals. From fantastic, festive light-work to site-specific, ephemeral public art installations and marquees, the entire city changes colours like a chameleon during the five days of Durga Puja. Bright LED displays, strips of fairy-lights, and colourful neon signs illuminate the streets; and pandals of unbelievable scale and creativity pop up like clusters of mushrooms in every neighbourhood. None of the designs are ever repeated. Every year brings with it a new mosaic of concepts, patterns, colours, and shapes. Every year, the city reinvents itself during Durga Puja.

And yet, amidst this ever-changing face of Durga Puja — or as we Bengalis like to call it, simply ‘Pujo’ — in Kolkata, some things never change. Despite their fall from grace in the post-independence years, the gilded allure of Bonedi Bari-r Pujo or the family pujas of Kolkata's erstwhile great families remains as powerful as ever.

The phrase ‘Bonedi Bari’ comes from the Bengali variation of the Farsi loanword ‘Buniadi’, meaning ‘foundational’. In the colonial era, these houses belonged to the erstwhile Indian elite families of aristocrats, businessmen, traders, and diplomats who worked with, for, and sometimes against the European settler-colonial powers. In many ways, both literally and figuratively, these families were the founding families of Kolkata in the colonial era.

The Sabarna Roy Choudhury family, for example, were the zamindars of vast swathes of land in Mughal Bengal including the villages Sutanuti, Gobindapur, and Kalikata which would later become Kolkata as we know it today. In 1698, the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family was forced to sell these settlements to the British East India Company; and by 1805, the Company had converted these three settlements into a modern city of the 19th century — Calcutta!

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the history of Kolkata is the history of Kolkata’s Bonedi families. As their wealth and influence exploded in the colonial era, so did the grandeur and influence of Kolkata; and as their powers waned with the abolition of the zamindari system and the nationalisation of much of their assets in the post-Independence period, so did Kolkata’s star diminish.

Beyond their influence on colonial politics, however, the Bonedi families also influenced Bengal’s sartorial style and popular culture. The same Sabarna Roy Choudhury family is also credited with hosting the first public Durga Pujo in Kolkata in the 1600s. Supposedly over 400-years-old now, the Aat-chala Durga Puja of the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family is said to be older than Kolkata itself. These family pujos are as much a part of Kolkata's Pujo culture as the larger, collective club pujos popular for their pomp.

There are many Bonedi Bari-r Pujos spread across Kolkata and its suburbs, but here are five that you must visit if you are in Kolkata during Durga Pujo:

Located at the heart of Kolkata's oldest borough, Sovabazar Sutanuti, the Sovabazar Rajbari (or Sovabazar Royal Palace) is one of Kolkata's oldest and most famous Bonedi Baris. Durga Puja at the Sovabazar Rajbari began in 1757 during the time of Raja Naba Krishna Deb — the founding patriarch of the family. According to urban legend, it was the first time when non-Hindus were allowed to attend a family Durga Puja. Robert Clive had only recently defeated Siraj-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Bengal, at the Battle of Plassey, and Raja Naba Krishna Deb — a collaborator of Clive — decided to invite both Clive and Warren Hastings, the top British officials in Bengal at the time, to the family Durga Puja.

The Durga Pujo at Sovabazar Rajbari is credited with beginning many cultural traditions associated with modern Durga Pujas such as releasing the beautiful Neelkantha bird (Coracias benghalensis, Indian roller) on the last day of the puja and using Daak-er Saaj or corkwork ornaments to decorate the idols.

How to get there: Sovabazar Rajbari

The family Durga Puja of Rani Rashmoni Debi — the founder of Bengal's landmark Dakshineswar Kali temple — is one of the most celebrated Bonedi Bari-r Pujo in Kolkata. Although the Durga Pujo at the family's Janbazar residence is now better known as Rani Rashmoni Debi-r Bari-r Pujo or the family puja of Queen Rashmoni Debi, it was originally started by her father-in-law Babu Pritaram Marh (Das) in 1774. Currently, there are three branches of the family that celebrate Durga Pujas at their respective residences, but the one at the original location in Janbazar, now conducted by the Hazra family, is the most popular.

How to get there: Rani Rashmoni Bhawan

The Pathuriaghata Ghosh Bari is famous for its large, 85-feet long marble Thakur Dalan — the longest in Kolkata. The most famous member of the family, Babu Khelat Ghosh — a clerk at the office of Governor General Warren Hastings — was known for his eclectic tastes and patronage of the arts. The house still serves as a residence and office of the Ghosh family and remains out of bounds to visitors during most of the year. But come Durga Puja, the entire house turns into a festive playground, with the famous Thakur Dalan at its heart. The 170-year-old Durga Puja here has many unique traditions like offering the goddess homemade sweets like Chandana Kheer, bathing the idols with water collected from the proverbial thirteen rivers of Bengal and the juice of 12 different fruits.

How to get there: Pathuriaghata Rajbari

The Durga Puja at Thanthania Dutta Bari is unique for its representation of the goddess. In a departure from the more conventional Mahishasuramardini iconography of the Goddess as the slayer of demons, the idol here represents her in the Hara-Gouri form. Here, she sits on the lap of Shiva, displaying the Abhaya and Varada mudras with her hands. She is a peaceful and loving mother goddess. The Thanthania Dutta Bari-r Durga Puja was started by Dwarakanath Dutta in 1855.

How to get there: Thanthania Dutta Bari

Once the zamindars of the villages that would later become Kolkata, the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family has lost most of their past wealth and influence since the abolition of the zamindari system after independence. The family Durga Puja at the family's ancestral residence in Barisha, however, remains as opulent as ever. The oldest Durga Puja according to family lore, the Durga Puja of the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family was supposedly started by Lakshmikanta Majumder in 1610. In that way, the Pujo here predates the city by two centuries, and also predates the family title — Sabarna Roy Choudhury — which was conferred to them by the Mughals in 1626.

How to get there: Sabarna Roy Choudhury Aat-Chala Durga Puja

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