Club in bind over 'gold' Durga rumours

AGARTALA: What should have been a joyous occasion has turned into a nightmare for Agartala's Chatra Bandhu Club after reports emerged that it had commissioned a Bengal artist to make a gold Durga idol for the pujas.
Excitement started building in the Tripura capital when reports surfaced that the Chatra Bandhu Club's idol was the world's most expensive, costing a whopping Rs 4 crore.
Ashok Ghosh, secretary of the puja organizing committee of the club, said he had been inundated with queries about the so-called gold Durga. "The idol is made of fibre glass, not gold," he told TOI.
"Rumours about our gold Durga spread like wildfire. The reports are incorrect," he added.
The club commissioned Indrajit Poddar, an artist from North 24 Parganas in Bengal, to build the idol. It will be black in colour and decorated with gold ornaments sourced from a leading Kolkata-based jewellery showroom.
"Our Durga idol is five feet tall and made of fibre. Our budget is Rs 40 lakh, excluding the idol," Ghosh said. The fibre idol would cost only a few lakhs, not crores as some reports had said.
The cost of the gold ornaments had not been calculated as the club had not bought them, he added.
"Somehow half-baked information spread that our budget was Rs 4 crore. It even prompted tax officials to come searching for us," Ghosh complained. "We calculated the puja budget based on anticipated collections from the locality. Now, this publicity has created all kinds of problems for us," he added.
The pandal will be a replica of the Laxmi Narayan Temple in Vellore and Olympian Dipa Karmakar will inaugurate the puja on October 2 by wearing the ornaments. The pandal will be thrown open to visitors on October 5.
Artist Poddar has been making idols for more than a decade and often experiments with unique materials and components such as tree bark, fruit seeds or even shells and pearls to make idols. He began working on the idol in March soon after receiving the order from the club.
"We began the main fibre structure in March and the gold work commenced from April. By July, we had started working on the idol. It will be transported to Agartala as air cargo," Poddar said.
The organisers have also brought in decorators from Kolkata to depict Dipa's performance in the Rio Olympics and the London bridge, among others, as part of pandal decor.