Bonedi bari pujas of North Kolkata: the old family Durga Pujas and where they came from

About two weeks before the Puja of 2019, the goddess at Shobhabazar Rajbari stood in her thakurdalan (its pillared hall) without a drop of paint on her. Grey clay, ten arms, her children beside her and the lion at her feet, all under one arched frame. Over her head hung a glass chandelier, as if the evening guests were already on their way. That is the picture at the top of this page, and it is the whole idea of a bonedi bari puja in one frame. The goddess is not visiting a pandal. She is coming home, the way Uma comes home to her father's house in the agomoni songs, and the house has been expecting her for a very long time.

So how did a Puja held in the halls of a few great houses end up out in the street? The story of how it got there passes through Shobhabazar, a sharp-tongued Calcutta writer of the 1860s and a Rani who took on an Englishman over a drum.

What is a bonedi bari puja?

A bonedi bari puja is the Durga Puja of an old, once-wealthy Kolkata family, held in the family's own house, usually in a thakurdalan, the pillared hall that faces a courtyard. Bengali Wikipedia says the pujas of the city's old rich families are known by exactly this name. Bonedi means old and settled, a family with roots. The word is older than any guidebook.

In the early 1860s Kaliprasanna Singha, writing as Hutom the owl, used it in the first paragraph of his sketch of the Durgotsab. In the old days, he wrote, the Durga Puja was held only in the houses of rajas and "bonedi" big men; nowadays you see even Punte the oil-presser bringing home an idol. He meant it as a joke about new money. Read now, it is also a forecast: from the rajas' halls to Punte's house, and one day out into the street.

1757: Shobhabazar Rajbari and the year of Plassey

One of North Kolkata’s best known house pujas began in 1757, the year the East India Company defeated Siraj ud-Daulah at Plassey. Its founder, Nabakrishna Deb, had worked for the Company against the Nawab, and he celebrated its victory with a Durga Puja on a grand scale in his new house. Robert Clive came. English and Bengali Wikipedia both record it, and neither makes it sound like an accident.

Nabakrishna built two houses on what is now Raja Nabakrishna Street. The first, at number 35, is the one with the lions at the gate; it went to his adopted son Gopimohan and then to Raja Radhakanta Deb. The second, at number 33, the Choto Rajbari, he built after a son of his own, Rajkrishna, was born late in his life. The Puja of 1757 began in the first.

The house has collected history the way old courtyards collect pigeons. Swami Vivekananda was given his first civic reception in Calcutta here in 1897, after he came back from Chicago. Bengali Wikipedia adds two details on its own account: that the women of the house saw the goddess only on Ashtami, from behind a bamboo screen, to give anjali; and that animal sacrifice stopped in Radhakanta Deb's time, and by the custom of that time the bhog is still fried things and sweets made on the premises. Our Durga Puja bhog guide has more on what goes on the goddess's plate.

One of the city's most famous family pujas began as a thanksgiving for the side that won Plassey. It is worth knowing that before you stand in the courtyard.

When the Puja was a contest

What Shobhabazar started, the city's new rich copied. Bengali Wikipedia's history of Kolkata's Puja describes how, in the pujas of the babus that followed, the scriptures slipped to second place: a puja's standing rose with the number of English guests it could seat, and nautch girls danced in front of the goddess. Hutom's chapter is a long, delighted inventory of the same week in the shops and lanes, from new shoes to tin swords for the asura, as the city warmed up for it.

It is easy to read this and decide the old pujas were only vanity. We think that misses something. When the money went, stopping would have been the easy thing. The families who kept their pujas going anyway, bringing the goddess home year after year, are the reason the old rites, the old idols and the old bhog still exist in the city at all.

Rani Rashmoni's puja at Janbazar, the one that argued back

A short ride south of Shobhabazar, in Janbazar, the widow who ran one of Calcutta's great estates held her Puja the other way. English Wikipedia says Rani Rashmoni kept it with all-night jatras rather than entertainment for the Englishmen, with whom she carried on a running feud, and that she defied the British when they stopped Puja processions for disturbing the peace.

Bengali Wikipedia tells the story at the heart of that feud. One Puja morning an Englishman sued because the dhak at the Kolabou's bath in the Ganga had woken him. The next day the Rani sent the women to bathe with more people and more drums. She was fined fifty rupees; she answered by fencing off Babu Road with bamboo posts until the man came to terms. After she died in 1861, her sons-in-law held the Puja in their own houses. We cannot think of a better story to tell a child standing in a Kolkata courtyard in Pujo week.

1610: the oldest is not in the north

If you came here looking for the oldest Durga Puja in Kolkata, it is not on this walk. English Wikipedia says the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family has held a Durga Puja at its old home in Barisha, in the south of the city, since 1610, and calls it probably the oldest; Bengali Wikipedia agrees. Shobhabazar is where it gets tangled: one Bengali Wikipedia article calls its Puja the city's oldest and another calls it the second oldest. We will leave that argument to the families.

1. 1610

   The Sabarna Roy Choudhury family's Durga Puja at Barisha, probably the city's oldest.

2. 1757

   Nabakrishna Deb's first Puja at Shobhabazar, the year of Plassey.

3. 1860s

   Hutom mocks the new money that brings home idols.

4. 1861

   Rani Rashmoni dies; her Puja divides among her daughters' households.

5. 1897

   Vivekananda's reception at Shobhabazar.

6. 1910

   The first barowari pujas in Kolkata, by English Wikipedia's account: the Puja leaves the courtyard for the street.

7. 2021

   UNESCO adds Durga Puja in Kolkata to its list of intangible heritage, on 15 December.

How to see a bonedi bari puja in 2026

This year Shashthi falls on Friday 16 or Saturday 17 October depending on the almanac. By the Drik Panchang calendar for Kolkata, Saptami is on Sunday 18, Ashtami on Monday 19, Navami on Tuesday 20 and Dashami on Wednesday 21 October. Our Durga Puja 2026 day by day has the timings. None of the houses below has announced visiting arrangements yet.

• It is a family's worship in a family's home. Ask before you photograph the goddess or the rites, and step back when the priest needs the space.
• Mornings are quieter than evenings. The courtyards were built for a household and its guests, not for a pandal crowd.
• North Kolkata has many more house pujas than the three above, and the lanes around Shobhabazar will show you others.

Songs for an old courtyard

Pandal loudspeakers play this year's hits. A thakurdalan suits the older sound: four older-style Puja songs and the Ashtami dhak, for the walk or for home.

3:37

Trinayani Durga

Saregama Bengali

Dhananjay Bhattacharya, in Saregama's 2020 upload. Three and a half minutes of a voice that, for many of us, still means Puja mornings.

▶ Play hereMore in the Pujo mood

3:37

Ogo Amar Agamani Alo

Saregama Bengali

Sipra Bose, Saregama's 2020 upload. An agomoni, a song of the goddess's coming, which is the right mood for the week before.

▶ Play hereMore in the Pujo mood

5:17

Ebar Nabin Mantre Hobe

Saregama Bengali

Anup Ghoshal, just over five minutes: a Puja song about doing the worship in a new spirit, which is a fair thing to hum in a house that has done it the old way for 269 years.

▶ Play hereMore in the Pujo mood

4:09

Tui Pashan Girir Meye

Saregama Bengali

Manabendra Mukherjee sings Kazi Nazrul Islam's song to Uma, the daughter of the stone mountain, in Saregama's 2021 upload. Four minutes.

▶ Play hereMore in the Pujo mood

5:05

Ashtami, Pujar Dhak

Saregama Bengali

Saregama's recording of four drummers, Phani Natta, Joydeb Nandy, Manindra Das and Brajakanta Nandy. Five minutes. Play it in a courtyard and the arches do the rest.

▶ Play hereMore in the Pujo mood

▶1:21:55Play: Sunday Suspense: Kakababu, Rajbarir Rahasya

Sunday Suspense: Kakababu, Rajbarir Rahasya

Mirchi Bangla

For the evening after, Sunil Gangopadhyay's Kakababu and a mystery of an old rajbari, as the title promises, from Mirchi Bangla's Sunday Suspense. About an hour and twenty minutes.

▶ Play hereWatch on YouTube · Mirchi Bangla

When the dhak stops, the Pujo mood carries on with the season's songs. If the family pujas have made you curious about the other kind, our pandal guide for 2026 follows the Puja out of the courtyard and into the street. It all started in one like these.

Pictures: The idol taking shape in the thakurdalan of Shobhabazar Rajbari, 22 September 2019, about two weeks before that year's Puja.: Kinjal bose 78, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped

Just inNew stories from the channelsWhat the Bengali story channels have just put up, played from their own YouTube.See the stories