Part 1 – The Departure
The train screeched out of Howrah station, its wheels clattering like a restless animal tugging at chains. Rhea pressed her forehead to the cool window glass and watched the sprawling iron bridge dissolve into a maze of warehouses, smoke, and rust-colored walls. Behind her, the compartments were thick with the smell of fried luchis, boiled eggs, thermos-tea, and the constant drone of people talking, bargaining, gossiping as if no one on the train was a stranger. She hugged her sling bag tight, inside which her camera and notebook waited. A photo-essay project, her professors had said, something different for the autumn journal. But for her, this trip already felt like more than that.
Kolkata had been choking her. Deadlines, meetings, traffic horns, the white light of office cubicles where she interned for a design firm—all of it felt like walls pressing closer every day. Durga Puja would begin in a week, and the city had already turned feverish with lights and pandals sprouting at every corner. Yet she had chosen to leave the city during its grandest season. Friends had called her mad. “Who leaves Kolkata during Puja?” they laughed. She had smiled vaguely, because she couldn’t explain it: the pull she felt toward some nameless silence in the countryside, as though an invisible thread was tugging at her wrist.
Her grandmother used to speak of those silences. Long afternoons in villages where the air was ripe with the smell of paddy, where clay lamps burned at dusk and one could hear the sound of dhak echoing across bamboo groves. Her grandmother had once said, “Puja was different when the goddess was still made with bare hands under open skies. The city has forgotten that heartbeat.” Rhea wondered if that was what she was searching for—an echo of something almost lost.
The train roared through stations painted in red dust, each one smaller and quieter than the last. Vendors leapt in with baskets of guavas and cucumbers, shouting prices until the train began to move again and they vanished into fields. Beyond the glass stretched an endless quilt of Bengal: ponds where buffaloes wallowed, palm trees bending like old guardians, women in bright sarees bent over golden rice stalks. Rhea lifted her camera, but each shot felt hollow, as though the lens only skimmed the surface while the real story hummed beneath the skin of the earth.
She flipped open her notebook and scribbled: “How to photograph a silence? How to frame a breath of wind? How to listen to clay?” Her handwriting looked urgent, almost childlike, and she shut the notebook quickly before the co-passenger, an elderly man chewing betel leaf, could peek.
Hours later, the train slowed into a modest station—two concrete platforms, a tea stall, a scrawny dog wagging at strangers. The board read the name of the village in chipped blue paint. Rhea dragged her duffel out, stumbled onto the platform, and inhaled. The air smelt raw, earthy, with an undercurrent of wet hay. No taxi queue, no blaring horns—just a cycle-rickshaw puller nodding at her lazily and a group of children staring at her jeans and sneakers as if she were a visiting alien.
She had arranged to stay in a local schoolteacher’s house, recommended by a friend who had once passed through. The rickshaw carried her through lanes so narrow they seemed to unravel like secrets: mud-plastered houses with thatched roofs, courtyards where women pounded rice, goats wandering freely. The river flashed silver between coconut trees, and on its bank she glimpsed something that made her heart pause—bamboo skeletons of idols rising from the earth, their spines tied with straw, their heads still faceless.
By the time she reached the house, dusk had begun its slow descent. The schoolteacher’s wife, a gentle woman in a faded sari, welcomed her with sweet puffed rice and steaming black tea. They spoke little. Words seemed unnecessary when the evening was alive with sounds—the distant beat of drums, the chorus of crickets, the swish of water drawn from wells. Rhea ate quietly, feeling like she had entered not a village but another time.
Later, she walked out with her camera. The lane was lit only by flickering lanterns, casting long trembling shadows on mud walls. From a nearby shed came the earthy smell of clay. Peeking in, she saw men bent over half-formed figures, their hands dark with river silt, their eyes glowing in the lantern-light. They did not look up, even when her footsteps made the straw rustle. The figures on the ground seemed both human and divine—torsos sprouting arms, faces waiting to be born.
She froze, camera hanging loose. For the first time, she understood her grandmother’s words. Here, under this fragile light, the goddess was not a glittering statue on a city stage. She was clay—breathing, growing, fragile, resilient. And in the silence of those artisans’ hands, Rhea felt something stir inside her.
Back in her little room, she unpacked her notebook. Her first entry that night was simple: “The journey has begun. The city has left me. Now the clay will speak.”
She blew out the lantern and lay in darkness, listening to the night pulse of the village: dogs barking, an owl hooting, the faint hum of the river. For the first time in months, she did not feel restless. The departure was not just from Kolkata—it was from a version of herself she had outgrown.
And as sleep came to claim her, she dreamt of hands shaping clay, shaping her, shaping something unnamed but inevitable.
Part 2 – First Glimpse of Clay
The morning broke with a mist that lay over the village like a thin cotton sheet, softening the outlines of trees and ponds. Rhea stepped out into the courtyard, rubbing her eyes, and felt the dew cling to her sandals. The schoolteacher’s wife had already left puffed rice and gur on a plate by the wooden bench, along with steaming tea that smelled faintly of cardamom. The silence of dawn was broken only by the rhythmic thud of pestles somewhere in the distance and the faint ring of a temple bell calling the village awake.
She walked toward the riverbank, guided by the sound of voices. The air smelt of damp clay and straw. Soon she saw them—men stooped low, their hands buried in wet earth, lifting it out of the river and slapping it onto woven mats. Children carried the lumps, balancing them in small baskets on their heads, scampering across the muddy path with laughter trailing behind them. The river itself looked ancient, its waters slow and heavy with secrets.
At the heart of the activity stood a shed—bamboo poles, palm leaves tied loosely for a roof. Inside, Rhea froze, camera halfway raised. The idols were skeletons at this stage, nothing more than bamboo ribs tied together with straw and jute strings, but they stood tall like waiting guardians. The artisans moved quietly, each step measured, their hands dancing with material they seemed to know more intimately than flesh and blood.
“Didi, looking for someone?” a voice startled her. An older man with a thin white beard and bare chest stood beside her, wiping his hands on a ragged cloth. His eyes, sharp and dark, scanned her city clothes, the camera, the notebook tucked under her arm.
“I… I’m just here to learn about your work. I’m Rhea. I’m from Kolkata.” Her words felt clumsy, too modern in this earthy place.
He nodded slowly, as though he had been expecting her. “I’m Hari. People here call me Hari-da. Come inside, don’t just stand there.”
She stepped cautiously, careful not to trip over the straw strewn across the floor. Hari-da picked up a bamboo stick and demonstrated how they tied it, one by one, to form the skeleton of the goddess. “Everything begins here. The frame is her body. If this isn’t right, nothing else will stand.” His voice carried the weight of someone who had repeated this ritual his whole life.
Rhea aimed her camera, but as soon as the shutter clicked, she felt an odd unease. The image on the screen seemed flat compared to what she felt—the raw devotion in his hands, the pulse of life humming in the half-formed figure. She lowered the camera, embarrassed.
“Take photos if you want,” Hari-da said kindly. “But the clay doesn’t always show itself in pictures. You have to sit, watch, listen. That’s when she reveals.”
She sat on an upturned bucket, watching. A younger boy, perhaps fifteen, dipped straw in wet clay and pressed it onto the idol’s torso, building curves, muscle, softness. Another shaped fingers, still crude but already curling with grace. The work was quiet but alive, like a hidden conversation.
“Doesn’t it get tiring?” she asked.
Hari-da laughed, showing a mouth with missing teeth. “Tiring? Of course. Our backs ache, our eyes strain. But this is what we know. My father did this, his father before him. The goddess is both our curse and our blessing. She gives us bread, but also keeps us chained.”
Rhea scribbled quickly in her notebook: “Clay is both prison and prayer.” She wanted to ask more, but her throat felt tight.
As the day grew warmer, she followed the workers outside where clay figures lay drying under the sun. Rows of faceless torsos stood, waiting for attention. A little girl skipped between them, humming a folk tune, careful not to touch. Rhea asked her name—Mitali—and the girl giggled before running off.
By noon, the sun blazed on the corrugated roofs, and the artisans broke for a meal of rice and boiled vegetables. They invited her, and she joined, sitting cross-legged on the floor. The taste was simple, the kind of food she rarely ate in the city, but it filled her with an odd satisfaction.
Afterward, she returned to the shed, alone this time. The idols loomed larger in the stillness, their faceless heads tilted skyward, as if waiting for voices that never came. She lifted her camera again, but instead of shooting, she touched one rough clay arm. It was cool, damp, alive with texture.
She whispered without meaning to: “Who are you before you have eyes?”
The clay gave no answer, but her chest tightened with a strange ache. For the first time, she wasn’t thinking about her project, or deadlines, or the glossy pages of a journal. She was simply present, a speck of flesh watching clay dream of becoming divine.
When she returned to the schoolteacher’s house that evening, lanterns had begun to glow at doorways. In her notebook she wrote: “Today I saw the goddess before she was born. Maybe that is what I came here for—not idols, not photographs, but to see what waits before creation.”
She closed the book and lay back, the smell of damp clay still clinging to her skin. And though she was tired, her mind refused sleep. For she knew tomorrow the clay would show her something else, something deeper. The first glimpse was only the beginning.
Part 3 – Lantern Nights
Evening slid into the village like a quiet river, slow and inevitable, carrying with it shadows that lengthened against the mud walls and the smell of smoke rising from cooking fires. Rhea stepped outside the schoolteacher’s house after washing her face at the hand-pump, droplets of cold water still clinging to her cheeks. The world was changing colors before her eyes—the pale orange sky folding into indigo, the outlines of palm trees sharpening against the last breath of light.
Children ran barefoot across the lanes, chasing one another with fireflies caught in jars. The women of the village called them back in sharp voices, though laughter followed the scolding, echoing like silver bells. Rhea walked slowly toward the idol shed she had visited in the morning, her camera slung but idle. Tonight, it wasn’t about capturing images. It was about listening.
The shed looked different at night. Kerosene lanterns hung from bamboo poles, their flames trembling in the faint breeze, shadows leaping over half-finished idols. The artisans sat on low stools, their bodies curved like bows as they worked. The silence of day was replaced by murmur and song—men humming folk tunes, one of them tapping a rhythm on a discarded clay pot. It wasn’t a planned performance; it was life spilling into sound.
Hari-da noticed her and beckoned. “Come, sit. The nights are long, but we keep each other company.”
She settled on a woven mat near the entrance. Someone passed her a brass plate with rice and fish curry, the gravy thin but fragrant with mustard oil. She hesitated, then ate with her fingers the way everyone did, and something loosened in her chest. The food was simple, yet it tasted of patience, of labor shared and lives woven tightly.
As they ate, the talk turned to struggles. A younger artisan complained about the rising cost of straw. Another muttered about middlemen who took idols to the city but paid the craftsmen a fraction. A woman spoke of floods the year before, how the river had swallowed half the clay stored for Puja season. Their voices weren’t bitter, only weary, as if hardship was another season that returned every year without fail.
Rhea listened, her notebook open on her lap. But instead of recording their words, she found herself sketching quick outlines of lanterns, faces bent over clay, the shape of a hand pressing mud. The images seemed truer than words.
After dinner, the work resumed. Rhea watched in fascination as Mitali, the girl she had seen in daylight, mixed a paste of clay and fine straw. Her slender hands moved with a grace beyond her years. When Rhea asked what she was doing, Mitali smiled shyly. “We call it lep. It smooths the body. Without it, the goddess will look rough.”
She bent closer, whispering, “My mother says each time we touch the idol, we should think of her as alive. Even when she is just clay.”
Rhea felt a shiver at the quiet devotion in those words. She took a photograph, but when she looked at the screen, she felt once again the inadequacy of the image. The real moment was in the hush, the warmth of lantern light on Mitali’s face, the belief that clay could breathe.
As the hours deepened, the air cooled, carrying the smell of night jasmine from some hidden corner. The artisans spoke less, their concentration intense. The only sounds were the scrape of tools against clay, the occasional hiss of a lantern being adjusted, the drone of crickets outside.
Rhea closed her notebook. For once she didn’t want to document. She wanted to simply be—a pair of eyes absorbing the glow, a pair of ears catching the unrecorded music of labor. She thought of her apartment in Kolkata, lit with bright white bulbs, walls buzzing with machines. Here, one lantern was enough to hold back the dark. Here, silence was not emptiness; it was a heartbeat.
She leaned against a bamboo pole, half-drowsy, when Hari-da’s voice broke through the hum. “Do you know why we work at night?”
Rhea shook her head.
“Because the goddess belongs to time itself. Day or night, she must be ready. And we have only our hands, not machines. The nights stretch long, but they are also gifts. We sit together, we talk, we remember that we are not alone.”
His words carried a rhythm like prayer. Rhea thought of her own nights in the city—sleepless, lit by phone screens, filled with scrolling and distraction. She wondered when she had last shared silence with others, without the need to fill it.
By midnight, the lanterns were burning low. The artisans lay down on mats near the idols, their snores rising softly into the roof. Rhea remained awake a little longer, staring at the faceless goddess in the corner. Her body was still only a frame, but in the flicker of dying light, Rhea thought she could almost see her eyes watching, waiting.
Back in her room, she lit the small lamp given by the schoolteacher’s wife. The flame quivered in the dark, fragile yet steady. She found herself whispering aloud: “Maybe this is what home feels like. Not walls, but the glow of a lamp in the dark.”
She fell asleep with clay on her palms, the smell of mustard oil still lingering on her tongue, and the faint echo of folk songs cradling her dreams.
Part 4 – Women of Clay
The morning sunlight crept into the village in thin golden threads, slicing through the smoke of cooking fires, falling on half-finished idols like blessings. Rhea wandered back to the shed after her breakfast of puffed rice and tea, expecting to see the men at work. But instead, she found women—silent, focused, their saris tucked high to free their hands. Their bangles clinked faintly as they kneaded clay, their fingers quick, confident.
She had assumed the men were the sole sculptors, the artists whose names were remembered. Yet here, in this unannounced hour, the women shaped the unseen foundations. Some rolled straw ropes to bind frames, some kneaded earth into soft lumps, some painted tiny ornaments in bright reds and yellows. The shed was quieter than at night, no folk songs, only the sound of clay being pressed, spread, smoothed, like a secret rhythm of creation.
One girl sat apart, a bowl of fine brushes beside her. Rhea recognized her—Mitali, the girl who had spoken about lep. Today she was painting eyes on a smaller idol, not a goddess but a Lakshmi meant for some household. Her hand hovered, brush tip trembling with precision. Rhea crept closer, lowering her voice.
“Why the eyes first?”
Mitali looked up, startled, then smiled softly. “Not first. Always last. The goddess must not see until she is ready. This is the Chokkhu Daan. We believe her soul enters when her eyes open.”
Rhea crouched, mesmerized. The brush moved in a single stroke, black as night, curving into the outline of an eye. Mitali’s lips moved silently, a prayer too private to share. When the second eye was drawn, the clay face changed. It was no longer an object. It seemed to breathe, to look, to know.
“Every time I do this,” Mitali whispered, “I feel she is watching me. Sometimes it is comforting. Sometimes frightening.”
Rhea’s notebook lay open on her lap, but her pen hesitated. How could she capture this moment? To write ‘women paint eyes with devotion’ felt hollow. The truth was in the way Mitali’s hand trembled, the way her eyes glistened, the way the clay face turned luminous with the first touch of paint.
She asked, “Do you ever wish to make the bigger idols, the ones for Puja?”
Mitali’s smile faded. “That is not for us. The men’s names go to the buyers, to the city. We remain here.” She dipped the brush again, her movements sharper now. “But without us, the goddess would remain blind. Tell me, is that less important?”
The words struck Rhea like a stone dropped into water, rippling outward. She remembered her own workplace in Kolkata, where she had been the invisible one—running errands, arranging designs for someone else’s signature. Her work unnoticed, yet essential. She had always thought of it as failure. But here was Mitali, certain of her place, certain that the unseen was not lesser.
The rest of the day, Rhea followed the women. She sat with them in courtyards where they cut straw into finer strands, plaiting them into frames. She helped mix colors ground from local soil—ochre, rust, a peculiar shade of green made from crushed leaves. She watched them wash clay-stained sarees by the pond, laughing as children splashed around them.
In their laughter, she heard resilience. In their silence, she heard strength.
At dusk, Mitali invited her to her home, a mud hut with a small veranda. An oil lamp flickered as Mitali’s mother served puffed rice with jaggery. On the wall hung old photographs—men from the family posing beside giant idols, their names proudly scribbled underneath. Not one woman was pictured.
Rhea asked softly, “Don’t you feel angry?”
Mitali shrugged. “Anger eats time. We have work. The goddess sees us. That is enough.” She paused, eyes fixed on the lamp flame. “But sometimes, when I paint her eyes, I imagine she carries ours too—our faces, our stories.”
Rhea felt her throat tighten. She reached for her notebook but instead of writing, she drew—the curve of an eyelid, the shape of a trembling brush, the outline of a girl whose story might never reach a journal page, yet lived in every clay idol that left the village.
When she returned to her room that night, she didn’t sleep immediately. She sat by her own small lamp, thinking of the women’s hands. They were not celebrated in glossy city articles, not quoted in newspapers. But their fingerprints clung to every goddess that rose during Puja, fingerprints that dissolved into water during immersion, unseen yet eternal.
She whispered to herself as the flame flickered low: “Maybe identity is not about being seen. Maybe it is about the truth we leave behind in silence.”
And when she finally closed her eyes, she dreamt of a hundred goddesses, their eyes opening one by one, carrying not just divinity but the faces of women who gave them sight.
Part 5 – River Journeys
The morning began with a rumble of voices near the riverbank. Rhea followed the sound and found Hari-da and a group of artisans loading bundles of straw, ropes, and large empty baskets into a wooden boat. The boat itself looked weary—planks patched, edges darkened from years of water pressing against it. A fisherman, bare-chested, adjusted the bamboo oar with a practiced hand.
Hari-da saw her and waved. “Come, today you’ll see where the goddess is born. Not in the shed, but in the river.”
Rhea hesitated. The boat seemed fragile, swaying against the current, but curiosity pulled her stronger than fear. She climbed in, clutching her camera close, and sat on a low bench. The river smelled of silt and moss, the kind of smell that clung to skin, earthy and stubborn.
The boat pushed off with a creak, cutting into the water. Soon the banks began to slip away—the mud huts, the drying clothes on lines, the children waving until their voices faded. Ahead stretched an expanse of water that gleamed under the mid-morning sun, dotted with patches of green where tall grasses grew. The oar dipped and rose, each stroke pulling them deeper into a quiet that seemed older than time.
Hari-da sat beside her, his eyes on the horizon. “Do you know why we collect clay from the river? It is not ordinary mud. It carries blessings. From this silt the goddess takes her strength. They say it holds the footprints of countless lives—farmers, widows, wanderers. All dissolve here, and from here she is born.”
Rhea listened, her pen scratching against paper. “Clay as memory, clay as prayer, clay as inheritance.” The words felt heavy, as though each carried centuries.
As the boat drifted, a group of fishermen passed by in a narrower dinghy. They greeted with wide smiles, calling out in a mixture of Bengali and laughter. One began singing a Bhatiali, his voice rising and falling with the rhythm of water. The song spoke of longing, of a boatman calling across a river wider than sight. The sound threaded into the air, merging with the rustle of reeds and the cry of unseen birds. Rhea felt her skin prickle—here was music born of water, carrying both sorrow and strength.
She clicked a photograph, but the frozen image felt thin compared to the vibration in her chest. So she closed the camera and simply listened, letting the river write into her instead.
The boat stopped near a shallow bend. Men leapt off, scooping handfuls of wet clay into baskets. The mud was heavy, glistening in the light. They worked barefoot, laughing as they slipped, their bodies coated with earth. Rhea tried stepping in, sinking ankle-deep, and gasped. The clay was cold, almost alive, pulling at her feet. The artisans laughed, one shouting, “The river wants to keep you!”
Hari-da steadied her. “Now you know why we say she chooses her daughters. You step in, and you belong.”
She bent, touching the mud with her palms. It was soft yet unyielding, clinging to her skin like memory. She smeared a little across her wrist, leaving a brown streak that looked like an unspoken vow. For the first time, she felt not just like an observer but part of the ritual itself.
When the baskets were filled, they hauled them onto the boat. The weight made the vessel sink lower, water lapping at the edges. The return was slower, the boat gliding under a sky now shifting toward afternoon gold. Rhea sat in silence, clay drying on her arms, her hair damp from the spray. The river seemed endless, like a mirror reflecting her own questions—who was she, what was she shaping with her choices?
As they neared the village, the boatman pointed to a shrine on the bank, a small hut painted red with offerings of flowers. A wooden idol of Bonbibi stood there, protector of the Sundarbans and all who entered its waters. Rhea folded her hands instinctively, whispering a prayer she didn’t know she had.
Back at the shed, the baskets of river clay were unloaded, piled high like treasure. The artisans touched the clay before beginning, as if greeting an old friend. Rhea lingered, staring at the mound. It looked ordinary, a heap of mud. Yet she knew now it was more—a body of memory, a vessel of countless unseen lives.
That evening, as lanterns lit again, she wrote in her notebook: “The river does not just give clay. She gives us ourselves, shaped anew. Maybe I, too, will be remade.”
When she lay down to sleep, the river’s song still echoed in her ears. And in her dreams, she floated endlessly—half clay, half light—carried by waters that knew her better than she knew herself.
Part 6 – The Festival’s Pulse
The village was changing every hour, like a living drumbeat building toward a crescendo. Rhea felt it the moment she stepped out of the schoolteacher’s house that morning—the sound of dhak thudding from a courtyard, the fragrance of shiuli blossoms scattered along the lanes, the rustle of new saris drying on lines. Everywhere, the air hummed with expectation. Durga Puja was not just coming; it was arriving, folding itself into each breath.
At the idol shed, the goddess had grown taller overnight. Her frame, once skeletal bamboo, now gleamed with layers of clay smoothed into muscle and curve. Her arms spread like rivers branching, her torso leaned forward with a strength that was almost human. Rhea stared at her, breath caught. How had this figure, faceless and unfinished, already begun to command space?
Hari-da was busy tying straw around the lion’s mane. Sweat gleamed on his forehead, but his eyes were bright. “See, Didi,” he said, voice carrying both pride and fatigue, “she is waking up. Every day she grows, and we grow with her. That is the pulse of Puja—you cannot escape it.”
The younger artisans worked with feverish speed. One smeared fine clay over the goddess’s cheek, another shaped the curve of fingers clutching a weapon. Mitali sat nearby, grinding vermilion with a flat stone, her palms stained red. Rhea crouched beside her.
“You look tired,” Rhea said gently.
Mitali smiled faintly. “Tired is part of Puja. The goddess asks for everything. We give it.” She lifted her hands, showing the red stains. “This will never wash away completely. Even months later, when I cook, the color will remain. As if she stays with us, long after she is gone.”
Rhea scribbled in her notebook: “The pulse of Puja is not in pandals or lights—it is in hands stained forever.”
By noon, the sound of conch shells drifted from the temple, mingling with the chatter of vendors who had set up makeshift stalls. Women sold garlands of marigold, children hawked paper toys, a man with a cracked voice sang old Agomoni songs that praised the mother’s arrival. Rhea wandered through, camera in hand, capturing glimpses—the glisten of fish laid out on banana leaves, the sparkle of glass bangles, the eager eyes of children tugging at their mothers’ saris.
She stopped near a pond where dhakis were practicing. The drums were massive, their skins stretched tight, and when struck, the sound rolled across water like thunder. One young boy, barely twelve, played with such ferocity that dust rose from the ground. Rhea felt the beat thrum in her chest, syncing with her own heartbeat. She lifted her camera, but lowered it again. To frame this rhythm felt like betrayal. Better to let it enter her body, unmediated.
Back at the shed, the idols had begun to wear their first layer of paint. Pale yellow faces stared blankly, waiting for detail. The artisans spoke little now, their energy consumed by precision. Every stroke mattered, every brush carried prayer.
Rhea sat on the floor, sketching the half-finished goddess in her notebook. For the first time, she did not see clay. She saw a woman half-born, her power not yet unveiled. And something in her chest stirred with recognition. Wasn’t she too half-formed, waiting for eyes, waiting for a voice that would name her?
As dusk fell, the village grew louder. Drums echoed from distant courtyards, lamps flickered along paths, and the smell of khichuri cooking for bhog drifted on the air. Children ran carrying paper lanterns shaped like fish, their laughter bright against the gathering dark.
Rhea joined Hari-da and the others for dinner by lantern light. He spoke between mouthfuls of rice and lentils. “Do you feel it? The festival’s pulse? Even if you shut your ears, it will beat in your bones. That is why Puja is not just celebration—it is surrender. We surrender our tiredness, our hunger, our pain. In return, she lets us breathe again.”
Rhea swallowed slowly, his words resting heavy inside her. She remembered Puja in Kolkata—crowds pushing through pandals, loudspeakers blaring film songs, selfies flashing under decorative lights. She had thought that was the festival. But here, in this village, she understood it differently. It was not spectacle. It was heartbeat.
Later that night, she sat alone by the river. The water glowed with reflections of lanterns, ripples carrying them far. She wrote in her notebook: “The city builds idols for show. The village builds them for survival. And yet, somewhere in between, the goddess finds her pulse.”
She closed the notebook, feeling the throb of drums even from afar. It was inside her now, unstoppable.
And as she walked back, clay dust clinging to her feet, she realized she was no longer just documenting. She was part of the rhythm, part of the pulse, part of something larger than herself.
Part 7 – Struggles Beneath the Glow
The mornings grew shorter now, the air carrying a faint bite of autumn chill. Rhea noticed it first when she stepped out of the schoolteacher’s house—the mist clinging closer to the fields, the villagers wrapping shawls over their shoulders as they hurried about. The idols, though, rose taller each day, their colors brightening, their bodies more divine. The village looked like a celebration was blooming. Yet beneath the glow, Rhea began to see the cracks.
It started with a storm. One afternoon, without warning, dark clouds rolled over the river. The sky rumbled, the air whipped into frenzy, and within minutes, rain lashed down in silver sheets. Rhea ran with Mitali to the shed, where artisans scrambled to cover idols with tarpaulin. The wind howled, lifting straw and clay into the air, turning the shed into a battlefield.
When the storm finally passed, a silence heavier than the rain followed. One of the half-finished idols had collapsed, its arm broken, its torso cracked. Hari-da sat in front of it, drenched, his eyes hollow. No one spoke for a long while. Rhea felt helpless, standing with her notebook limp in her hands.
Later that evening, she overheard two artisans whispering. “We cannot afford to start again. The buyer from the town already paid half. If we fail, we return the money.”
Another muttered, “And where will the money come from? Hari-da already owes the lender.”
Debt. The word throbbed in the air like a wound. Rhea had heard fragments before, but now she understood. Each idol was not just devotion—it was risk, survival balanced on fragile clay.
That night, Hari-da spoke to her directly. “Do you know what it costs us? People in the city see idols, marvel at the beauty, pay their respects. They do not see the hunger, the loans, the sleepless nights. This work… it is worship, yes, but it is also a chain. We cannot leave it, even when it breaks us.” His voice cracked, but he did not look away.
Rhea wanted to say something, to offer comfort, but all she managed was: “And yet you keep building.”
Hari-da’s eyes softened. “Because if we stop, the goddess stops coming. And then what meaning will remain for us?”
The next day, the artisans began repairing the broken idol. Their hands worked with even greater urgency, clay slapped onto the wounds as though healing flesh. Rhea joined them, carrying water, holding straw, trying to be useful. Her city-soft hands blistered, but she did not complain. She felt she owed them this much, at least.
As they worked, Mitali spoke quietly beside her. “We do not talk about money often. But you should know—my father once pawned my mother’s gold chain to buy clay. We still have not redeemed it. Sometimes I think every idol carries pieces of our lives—chains, debts, sacrifices. People see the goddess. They do not see what we bury inside her.”
Rhea wrote in her notebook later: “The idols are not just clay. They are hunger molded into smiles, debts painted in bright colors, broken backs disguised as divinity.”
That evening, the village glowed with lamps again, as if nothing had happened. Children played with paper toys, vendors shouted prices, drums beat. To an outsider, it looked like joy. But Rhea now noticed the shadows in the artisans’ faces, the weariness in their eyes, the way their laughter cracked like dry leaves.
She sat with them around a lantern, listening as they spoke of debts to moneylenders, of floods that had ruined entire seasons, of city buyers bargaining mercilessly. One artisan, his voice rough with fatigue, said, “Sometimes I wonder—are we worshipping the goddess, or feeding everyone else in her name? The buyers, the lenders, the politicians—they all eat from our hands. And we eat scraps.”
Silence followed, broken only by the hiss of a lantern.
Rhea swallowed hard. For the first time, she realized her project was not just about beauty. It was about survival, resilience, injustice. She felt ashamed of her earlier excitement, her eagerness to capture photographs of ‘exotic village life.’ These were not subjects. They were people, fighting battles every day with clay as both weapon and wound.
When she returned to her room that night, she stared at the small clay streak still marking her wrist from the river. It looked darker now, heavier. She touched it gently, whispering: “If I tell your story, will anyone hear it? Or will it drown like clay dissolving in water?”
She blew out the lamp and lay awake long into the night, the sound of the storm still echoing in her ears, mingled with the steady thrum of debt and devotion.
Part 8 – Fire and Faith
The nights grew sharper with the approach of Puja. The air smelled of incense now, mingled with smoke from kitchens where women fried fritters late into the evening. Everywhere, the village seemed to hold its breath—half-exhausted, half-exultant, as if poised on the edge of something sacred. Rhea felt it most vividly on the night before the Chokkhu Daan, when the final strokes would bring eyes to the goddess.
She arrived at the shed just as the artisans were finishing their day’s work. The idols stood nearly complete: the goddess’s body burnished with smooth clay, her ornaments carved with precision, her weapons sharp in her hands. Only her eyes remained blank, waiting. The absence was unsettling. She looked powerful, yet incomplete, like a body without a soul.
Hari-da gestured toward a corner where small lamps were being lit. “Tonight is sacred,” he said, voice low. “We do not speak much. When the eyes are painted, she enters. Until then, she waits, listening.”
The artisans worked in silence, preparing brushes, mixing pigments. The air thickened with devotion. Even the children who usually scampered noisily around the shed sat still, wide-eyed, as if sensing the gravity of what was about to unfold.
Mitali knelt before the goddess with a bowl of black pigment, her hands steady though her breathing quickened. The lantern light trembled against her face, throwing shadows across her cheekbones. Rhea leaned forward, her chest tight. She had read about this ritual, seen pictures in glossy magazines. But here, in this fragile circle of silence, it felt like a secret she was almost unworthy to witness.
The first stroke was a curve of black, delicate as a breath, shaping one eye. The brush moved slowly, deliberately, as if the world itself paused to watch. Then came the second, completing the pair. In that instant, the goddess changed. She was no longer clay. She was presence, radiant and unnerving.
Rhea’s skin prickled. She felt as though those painted eyes were looking directly at her, stripping her of all pretense. She wanted to look away, yet could not. The air was thick with awe, with a faith that seemed to rise like smoke from every chest.
A conch shell blew from the nearby temple, its sound spiraling into the night. The artisans folded their hands, murmuring prayers. Mitali’s lips moved silently again, tears glinting in her eyes. For a moment, even the lantern flames seemed to bow.
Rhea found her palms pressed together without thought. She was not religious, not in the way her grandmother had been. Yet something inside her surrendered. The clay, the eyes, the silence—they had all fused into a force larger than explanation.
After the ritual, the shed filled with soft chatter once more, but it was subdued, reverent. The artisans lit incense sticks, circling them around the goddess. Hari-da handed Rhea a clay lamp. “Light this,” he said gently.
She struck a match, watching the flame bloom. The clay lamp glowed in her hand, small yet unwavering. She placed it before the goddess, the flicker reflecting in the freshly painted eyes. Something tightened in her throat. She whispered, not to anyone else but to herself, “I don’t know what I believe. But tonight, I believe in this.”
Later, as the village prepared for the next day’s celebrations, bonfires dotted the courtyards. People gathered, tossing straw into the flames, singing old songs that rose like smoke into the star-swept sky. Rhea sat beside Mitali, the firelight washing their faces gold.
“Do you ever doubt?” Rhea asked softly.
Mitali shook her head. “Doubt comes, yes. But faith is not about never doubting. It is about still lighting the lamp. Even when storms break idols, even when debts crush us, we light it. Because without fire, the night will win.”
Rhea stared at the flames, her eyes stinging, though not from the smoke. She thought of her own life in the city, where she often felt lost, adrift, restless. Perhaps this was what she had been seeking—not answers, but fire. The kind of fire that could burn quietly in clay, fragile yet indomitable.
When she finally returned to her room, the small lamp she had placed on her table flickered in the dark. She sat before it, notebook open, and wrote: “Faith is not certainty. Faith is the courage to light a lamp in a storm.”
She closed the book, watching the flame. It wavered but did not die. Neither, she realized, would she.
Part 9 – The Immersion
The village awoke before dawn on the day of immersion. Conch shells echoed from courtyards, their sound rolling like waves across the fields. Drums beat in a fevered rhythm, dhakis’ palms striking with force that shook the earth itself. Women in red-bordered saris bustled about with trays of offerings—marigolds, bel leaves, sweets wrapped in banana leaves—while children painted their faces with streaks of vermilion. Everywhere, anticipation glowed, the kind that made even tired eyes shine.
Rhea stepped out into this whirl of sound and color, her camera slung uselessly. She didn’t want to stand apart anymore, watching from behind a lens. Today, she wanted to walk with them, to feel the ground shake under her feet, to breathe the same charged air.
The idols, magnificent and resplendent, were lifted from the shed onto bamboo platforms. Men tied ropes, their muscles straining, sweat mixing with sandalwood paste on their foreheads. The goddess, now alive with painted eyes, golden ornaments, and bright saris, loomed larger than the sky itself. Rhea felt her chest ache at the sight. Only days ago she had been faceless clay. Now she was mother, warrior, queen.
The procession began. Drums thundered, conch shells sang, voices rose in unison—“Bolo Durga Mai ki… Joy!” The cry carried into the air, fierce, jubilant. The idols swayed on shoulders as men marched through the narrow lanes, women scattering rice and sindoor in their path. Children darted between legs, shouting, laughing, their joy boundless.
Rhea walked beside Mitali, who carried a plate of flowers. “How do you feel?” Rhea asked, her own voice trembling.
Mitali’s eyes were wet, though her smile was radiant. “She goes, but she always returns. That is faith. We let her leave because we know she will come again.”
The path wound toward the river, where hundreds had gathered already. Boats bobbed on the water, their lanterns flickering in the dusk. The river itself seemed to pulse with waiting, its surface glinting like molten copper in the setting sun.
The idols were lowered carefully onto boats. Drums grew louder, voices wilder, vermilion filled the air in clouds of red. Women smeared sindoor on each other’s faces, laughter and tears mixing in one moment. Mitali pressed a streak of red onto Rhea’s forehead. “Now you are part of us,” she said.
Rhea’s throat closed. She wanted to say thank you, but the word felt too small. Instead, she smiled through tears, letting the red sink into her skin.
The boats pushed off. Slowly, the idols were carried into the river, their colors mirrored in trembling reflections. Drums reached a frenzy, voices broke, hands stretched out as if unwilling to let go. Then, one by one, the idols were tipped into the water. Clay arms, painted faces, jeweled crowns—all dissolved into ripples.
Rhea gasped as the goddess she had watched grow from bamboo and straw vanished beneath the current. The river swallowed her with indifference, clay breaking apart, colors running like blood. Yet the crowd cheered, not mourned. “Asche bochor abar hobe!”—She will return next year.
Standing on the bank, Rhea felt the paradox strike her. All this labor, all this devotion, all this beauty—destroyed in a moment. And yet it was not destruction. It was cycle. Creation, worship, farewell, return. The goddess did not end; she transformed. The clay returned to the river, the river would feed the fields, the fields would give grain, and from that grain, the next goddess would rise.
Mitali touched her arm. “Do you understand now?”
Rhea nodded slowly. “It’s not about keeping. It’s about letting go.”
The night grew thick with celebration. The village danced, sang, shared sweets. Children’s faces glowed red with sindoor, men’s hands black with drumsticks, women’s hair undone in laughter. Rhea moved among them, dizzy with joy and sorrow woven into one thread.
When she finally sat by the river alone, the water whispered in the dark. Fragments of clay floated past—an eye here, a hand there—slowly dissolving. She dipped her hand into the current, feeling the silt slide through her fingers.
Her notebook lay open on her lap. She wrote: “The goddess is not permanence. She is return. To dissolve is not to die. It is to prepare for being born again.”
She closed the notebook, letting the river carry the words away in her mind. For the first time, she felt peace.
Part 10 – The Return
The morning after immersion was quieter than Rhea had expected. The village, so alive with thunderous drums and cries the night before, now lay wrapped in a hushed calm. Stray streaks of vermilion still clung to walls, marigold petals floated in ponds, the smell of burnt incense lingered faintly in courtyards. It felt like the silence after a storm—exhausted, sacred, inevitable.
Rhea walked slowly toward the shed. Inside, it looked abandoned, the bamboo frames empty, the floor littered with broken straw and patches of dried clay. The goddess was gone, carried back into the river. Only ghosts remained, impressions on the earth where her feet had once stood. For a long time, Rhea simply stood there, staring at absence.
Hari-da arrived, his shoulders slouched but his eyes gentle. “Every year it feels strange,” he said. “The shed looks naked, as though something has been stolen. But we learn to wait. Soon enough, the clay will return.” He gave her a smile faint as dawn. “Like us, she too must rest.”
Rhea nodded, her heart heavy but calm. She realized this rhythm was not tragedy; it was truth. The goddess was never meant to stay. She was meant to come, to bless, to leave, to be reborn. Permanence had never been the promise—renewal was.
Later that day, she sat with Mitali one last time, helping her wash clay-streaked sarees by the pond. Children splashed nearby, chasing one another with bamboo sticks, their laughter carrying across the water. Mitali wrung her sari, her voice soft. “When you return to the city, what will you take with you?”
Rhea thought for a moment. “Not just photographs. Not just notes. I’ll take your hands, your voices, your faith. The way you light lamps even in storms. The way you let go and still believe in return.”
Mitali smiled, eyes shining. “Then you are one of us now.”
When the sun dipped low, painting the sky in hues of rust and violet, Rhea boarded the train back to Kolkata. From the window, the fields stretched endlessly, dotted with ponds glowing in twilight. The station vanished, the voices of villagers calling goodbyes melted into distance. She pressed her hand to the window, clay still faint under her fingernails, as though refusing to leave her.
The train rattled forward, its rhythm carrying her back to the city. But something inside her had shifted. She no longer felt the same restless ache she had carried when she first left. Instead, she felt full—of stories, of faces, of a pulse that would not leave her bones.
Back in Kolkata, the city was roaring with Puja fever—lights strung across pandals, crowds pressing at every corner, loudspeakers blaring songs. Yet Rhea walked through it all with a new stillness. She wasn’t searching anymore. She had already found what she needed in lantern-lit nights, in women painting eyes, in rivers carrying idols away.
That evening, in her small apartment, she placed a clay lamp on the window sill. Striking a match, she lit it, the flame flickering against the city’s neon glow. She sat before it, notebook open, and wrote her final words of the journey:
“Home is not a place. It is a pulse. I found mine in clay, in faith, in return. The goddess does not stay, but she never leaves. She is cycle. She is fire. She is us.”
She closed the notebook, letting the flame warm her face. Outside, the city roared, but inside, the lamp burned quietly, steady, eternal.
And Rhea knew she would carry that light with her, always.
