I remember first wanting to go to Kumartuli at nine, it's stayed since then as a want that just didn't work out till Friday. And now that I've been I think I won't return. It's not the narrow lanes or the little workshops stuffed to bursting with limbs and gaudy cloth, it's that the place is haunted. I can't explain how. There was this smell of clay that brought back a texture. I was immediately reminded of the way clay modelling classes used to feel at age nine - I'd walk out with hands squirming with the smell of wet earth, feeling slimy when dry, feeling dirty when all of it had been washed off, black clay still packed tight under the fingernails, that overwhelming coolness of the skin for hours after. It was one of my favourite courses though, clay modelling. Kumartuli is like clay modelling class round-the-clock and on a scale larger than I'd imagined, only the products, they scare me. It's not even the products, really, it's that the men who create these statues live with them. I don't know how they cannot be haunted, I wouldn't last a night in the place. Lions looking over me jaws extended, fake whiskers still, paws ready to swipe, but never doing anything. Just gleaming and sending out the smell of varnish. Red lips and pointed teeth. Angry eyes everywhere. Doing nothing but gleaming and giving off that smell of varnish till I'm dizzy, the very thought scares me.

This is the closest I could get to a fairly spacious workshop, and it still scared me.


It isn't even all of this. It's all the claustrophobia. And a cracked moulded hand I saw languishing by the side of a road.