From pandals to pages Sunrise takes Durga Puja stories to lit fest

MUMBAI: When the drums fade and the lights dim, the stories linger and this year, they found a literary home. ITC Sunrise Spices took Bengal’s biggest festival beyond the pandal and onto the page at the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival 2026, showcasing its landmark grassroots initiative Sunrise Pujor Saatkahon. The project, launched during Durga Puja 2025, captured the festival not as spectacle alone, but as a living archive of emotion, artistry and community memory.

At the heart of the initiative are 250 unique Durga Puja stories, documented from across West Bengal far beyond Kolkata reflecting neighbourhood traditions, local creativity and the diverse regional voices that define the state’s Puja culture. In bringing Pujor Saatkahon to one of India’s most respected literary platforms, Sunrise positioned Durga Puja as a narrative tradition worthy of preservation and discussion.

A key highlight of the festival was a panel discussion titled “Pujo Special: Celebrating the Durga Pujos of Bengal”, held on 11 January 2026 at the Alipore Museum. The session explored how Durga Puja has evolved into a powerful cultural narrative shaped by para-level participation, visual artistry, social themes and collective memory drawing extensively from stories featured in the Sunrise Pujor Saatkahon coffee-table book.

The panel brought together voices from Bengal’s cultural and creative landscape, including Sayantan Maitra, Ushoshi Sengupta, Moon Moon Sen and Tonmoy Roychoudhury. The discussion acknowledged Sunrise Pujor Saatkahon as one of the most expansive grassroots cultural movements around Durga Puja in recent years, notable for documenting the festival beyond visual grandeur and capturing its people-led storytelling core.

The initiative itself involved over 1,500 Durga Puja committees, spanning multiple phases of community participation, voting, on-ground audits and celebrations. These efforts culminated in the release of the Sunrise Pujor Saatkahon book, a lasting tribute to 250 Puja narratives, designed to preserve the festival’s cultural significance long after the idols return home.

Alongside the panel, Sunrise hosted a dedicated stall at the festival, where visitors accessed both physical and digital editions of the book, extending the life of the stories beyond the festive season.

By taking Puja from streets to sentences, Sunrise demonstrated how brands can participate in culture not by amplifying noise, but by archiving meaning turning Bengal’s most beloved celebration into a story that continues to be read, discussed and remembered.