Have you ever visited Dubai? If you have not, you can visit it this year without spending a rupee, without a passport, without leaving Bhubaneswar.
With Durga Puja celebrations underway with pomp and gaiety, Ommcom News takes you live to Bomikhal, where the world’s most glittering skyline has come home for the puja.
Bhubaneswar is in full festive mode. In the heart of this fervour, one pandal is promising to take you on a journey far from home. The Bomikhal Durga Puja pandal, one of the oldest in the city, has chosen Dubai as its theme this year.
Yes, Dubai. The glittering skyline of the UAE, rising out of the desert, has been recreated in the lanes of Bomikhal. Visitors will be greeted by replicas and representations of some of the city’s most iconic landmarks, including the towering Burj Khalifa and the sail shaped Atlantis, giving a glimpse of Dubai’s distinctive architecture right in the middle of the celebrations.
Step into the Bomikhal Durga Puja pandal and Dubai unfolds before you. Not a picture of it, not an idea of it, but its skyline recreated in bamboo and cloth. The Burj Khalifa pierces the pandal ceiling. The Atlantis rises beside it, glittering in gold and blue.
For the committee, which has been organising the puja in the locality for decades, this is a shift in scale and imagination. Last year, the pandal was themed on a peacock. This year, the puja committee has turned to Dubai’s famed skyline for inspiration. It is the 63rd year of puja at Bomikhal, and the committee has gone all out.
According to the puja committee members, the pandal measures around 80 feet in height and 110 feet in width. It has been built by around 35 artisans from West Bengal and Kataka, who have worked on the structure for the past two months. And at the centre of it all will be the idol of Goddess Durga, adorned with around 18 kg of silver ornaments.
With the themed pandal already drawing large crowds, elaborate security arrangements have been put in place. CCTV cameras have been installed in the area. Besides, more than 100 security personnel and volunteers have been deployed to regulate crowds and ensure the safety of visitors, particularly women and children.
For the organisers, however, the Dubai theme is not merely about grandeur. It carries a message. Dubai was once a desert, but it has transformed into a world class city. If Dubai could achieve such transformation, Bhubaneswar too has the resources and potential to develop further.
A desert city that reinvented itself, mirrored in a pandal that brings the world to Odisha. That is the invitation from Bomikhal this Puja: come for the spectacle, stay for the idea.
