It is that time of the year again in CR Park! As Durga Puja approaches, statues of Durga, Ganesha, and other Gods and Demons are being prepared in full swing. More interesting than that, however, is the location of where this is done year after year. The Chanderlok Cinema! CR Park, home to a large number of Delhi’s Bengali community, once had a cinema hall within its boundaries.

This was the Chanderlok Cinema. I first came across it in Delhi: 4 Shows by Ziya Us Salam. While walking through CR Park with a colleague for a story on Pujo Prep at Delhi’s largest Bengali settlement, we actually ventured inside the compound.

This cinema hall, which was once known for screening low-budget and regional cinema, operated between the mid-70s to the early 2000s. Salam writes in his book that it would even screen the occasional Bengali film on Sundays. However, it began and ended with a bang. The theatre started off with the film ‘Jay Santoshi Maa’ (a Goddess who didn’t really exist in the Hindu pantheon pre-1960s and owes much of her popularity today to this film), and the final film it played was Gadar in 2001. Chanderlok shut down in 2002 as bigger (and better) cinema halls emerged, and the demand for the kind of films it usually played died down.  

Today, however, the Chanderlok has become a temporary home to artisans who craft these statues. They come here every year around the Pujo season (September/October) and create these grand statues. While there aren’t any lines of people queuing outside this hall anymore, there are lines of clothes that hang outside to dry. Wood and Clay take over the compound at this time of the year.

(Do check out my other blog post on CR Park: CR Park Remembers the 5th of November)

Soon, these statues will make their way to the grand pandals of CR Park, various other pandals, and several other Kali Baris of Delhi where Pujo is celebrated.

Life comes full circle as a theatre that began by screening ‘Jai Santoshi Maa’ is now a temporary home for those who sculpt statues of another Goddess, Durga.

The next time you go Pandal Hopping at CR Park, think of Chanderlok.