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Pujo listening: stories for a lazy Saptami and an Ashtami adda
Eleven Bengali audio stories for the two moments of the Pujo when people actually sit down to listen, the Saptami afternoon after the morning's pandals and the Ashtami night after the late ones, and one for Dashami.
Every Pujo has two quiet hours that nobody plans for. The first comes on Saptami, around three in the afternoon, when the morning's pandals have been done, lunch has been eaten, and the house goes still under the fan. The second comes at the other end of Ashtami, well after midnight, when the last pandal is behind you and nobody is ready to go to bed. The photograph above, of a pandal in Ahiritola at 4.18 in the morning, is what that second hour looks like. People are still walking.
This list is for those two hours, in that order, and it makes no claim to be the best Bengali audio stories of all time. Pujo stories should be picked by the clock rather than the shelf: a slow comic story that suits three in the afternoon falls flat at a midnight adda, and a ghost that works in the small hours frightens nobody in daylight. So here is what we would put on in each hour, and why.
For a lazy Saptami afternoon
The Saptami afternoon wants something funny and unhurried, long enough to lie down to, not so gripping that a nap feels like a loss. Nobody does that better than Parashuram, the pen name of Rajshekhar Basu, a chemist at Bengal Chemicals. English Wikipedia calls him the greatest Bengali humorist of the twentieth century and fills in the rest: the pen name was borrowed from the family goldsmith, and his first book of stories, Gaddalika, came out in 1924 to praise from Tagore. What makes him a strange choice for a siesta is the rest of his life. The man who will make you laugh yourself to sleep on Saptami was, in 1935, put in charge of Calcutta University's committee on how Bengali words should be spelt, and two years later he published Chalantika, a Bengali dictionary English Wikipedia says is still in use. Tagore's verdict, in substance, was that Bengali at long last had a dictionary. The comic stories and the spelling rules came from the same hand, and it is tempting to hear the second in the first. We carry a shelf of him, all on our Parashuram page. Three to start with, then something longer.
51:33Play: Sunday Suspense: Birinchi BabaSunday Suspense: Birinchi Baba
Mirchi Bangla
Mirchi Bangla, 2023, fifty-two minutes. A holy man, and Parashuram enjoying himself at his expense. Satyajit Ray made his film Mahapurush from this story. Between the pandals, the anjali and the relatives, if one hour of this Pujo is left for you alone, keep it for this.
31:59Play: Sunday Suspense Classics: Bhushandir MaatheySunday Suspense Classics: Bhushandir Maathey
Mirchi Bangla
Mirchi Bangla, 2024, thirty-two minutes. Filed under ghosts and under comedy at once, which is the right place for it. Shorter, so it fits between lunch and the second cup of tea.
35:20Play: Sunday Suspense Classics: Mahesher MahajatraSunday Suspense Classics: Mahesher Mahajatra
Mirchi Bangla
Mirchi Bangla, 2024, thirty-five minutes. Another of his split between the two shelves. Put it on when Bhushandir Maathey ends and the afternoon's mood will hold.
49:33Play: Sunday Suspense: Rasomoyeer RasikataSunday Suspense: Rasomoyeer Rasikata
Mirchi Bangla
Not Parashuram, but Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, from an older Sunday Suspense, 2015, fifty minutes. The same afternoon mood, from an older hand in Bengali humour.
2:08:30Play: UmaUma
THRILLER LAND
THRILLER LAND's Durga Puja special, 2024, and long: two hours and eight minutes. Their channel calls it an otherworldly story. Put it on when you lie down. If you drift off halfway, no harm done: a story this long will still be going when you wake, and it will carry you into the evening's pandals.
For the Ashtami night adda
Ashtami night is different. There are four or five of you, the tea has turned into something else, and a story has to hold a room. The afternoon listener is alone and the night listener is a crowd, and anyone who has tried to tell a story on a para rock knows how hard it is to keep a group of wide-awake Bengalis quiet, so the night wants detectives and ghosts, in a sensible order: a short one to settle everyone, a long case for the middle, ghosts for the small hours.
7:02Play: Love Shorts: Ashtamir AnjaliLove Shorts: Ashtamir Anjali
Akashvani Kolkata
Akashvani Kolkata, 2025, seven minutes, a love story named after Ashtami's anjali. Before the adda, for whoever gave anjali that morning and is still thinking about it.
1:56:49Play: Sunday Suspense: Eken Babu, Manhattan-ey MoonstoneSunday Suspense: Eken Babu, Manhattan-ey Moonstone
Mirchi Bangla
The long one: a hundred and seventeen minutes, Mirchi Bangla, 2022. Sujan Dasgupta's Eken Babu, the bald, snuff-taking detective who looks like any Bengali uncle, in the story that started him, first published in 1991, English Wikipedia says. RJ Deep plays him.
32:38Play: Sunday Suspense Classics: Bagh NokhSunday Suspense Classics: Bagh Nokh
Mirchi Bangla
Thirty-three minutes of Kiriti Roy, the detective created by Nihar Ranjan Gupta, a dermatologist by profession. Mirchi Bangla, 2025. Good for the break when someone goes to make more tea.
46:24Play: Sunday Suspense Classics: Duti Bhooter GalpoSunday Suspense Classics: Duti Bhooter Galpo
Mirchi Bangla
Two ghost stories by Hemendra Kumar Roy, who helped build early Bengali detective and adventure fiction, in forty-six minutes. Mirchi Bangla, 2024. This is where the lights go off.
29:30Play: Taldighi 20: Durga pujor golpoTaldighi 20: Durga pujor golpo
221B Harrison Road
From 221B Harrison Road's village ghost series, and titled, plainly, a Durga Puja story. Thirty minutes, 2023. The only story on this list whose title names the Puja outright.
1:29:30Play: Mahishasura Mardini (18+)Mahishasura Mardini (18+)
THRILLER LAND
THRILLER LAND marks this crime thriller 18+, and so do we. An hour and a half, 2022, and a title every Bengali knows from the Mahalaya-morning radio, put to a very different use. For the adults, after the children are asleep.
And one for Dashami
2:27Play: OMG O Maa Go: Bijoya pronaamOMG O Maa Go: Bijoya pronaam
Mirchi Bangla
Two minutes from Mirchi Bangla's comedy series, in which a mother wants her son to go and do his Bijoya pronaam. Every Bengali son has been this son. Play it on Wednesday evening before you ring the relatives.
When the list runs out, the detective, ghost and comedy shelves carry on, and Eken Babu and Kiriti have pages of their own. For the ghosts that live in Bibhutibhushan's Bengal rather than Kolkata, there is our guide to Taranath Tantrik.
PS: the Pujo will be over by the time you finish all twelve, which is rather the point. The stories will keep all year, and a drowsy Saptami afternoon and an Ashtami night that will not end come round only once. Our Durga Puja 2026 day by day has the rest of the week's timings, for the hours when you are not listening.
References (6)
- Rajshekhar Basu, Wikipedia. Checked 30 Sep 2026.
- রাজশেখর বসু (Rajshekhar Basu), Bengali Wikipedia. Checked 30 Sep 2026.
- Ekenbabu, Wikipedia. Checked 30 Sep 2026.
- Nihar Ranjan Gupta, Wikipedia. Checked 30 Sep 2026.
- Hemendra Kumar Roy, Wikipedia. Checked 30 Sep 2026.
- Durga Puja calendar 2026, Kolkata, Drik Panchang. Checked 29 Sep 2026.
Pictures: A pandal in Ahiritola, North Kolkata, at 4.18 in the morning, in the Puja season of 2007, by the photographer's own label.: Mukerjee, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped
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