Patna: In singer Monali Thakur’s popular Durga Puja song ‘Dugga Elo’, the line ‘Kumartuli gondho choralo’ evokes the fragrance of clay and the arrival of Goddess Durga. In Patna, this connection with West Bengal comes alive every year as artisans from Kumartuli and Krishnanagar travel to the city, bringing generations of sculpting skills and rituals that shape the festival.At the Adalatganj Durga Puja Committee pandal, preparations go beyond making an idol. From the hands that mould the goddess to the sacred soil collected from Kolkata’s Sonagachi red-light area, every element has a place in traditions the Bengali community in Patna has sought to preserve over the years.“Four artisans have come from Kumartuli to make the idol. We follow the same design of Durga idol that has been maintained for more than a century. The decorative materials are sourced from Kumartuli in Kolkata, and our priest also comes from there,” said Partho Mukherjee of the committee.An integral part of the process is ‘punya maati’ (sacred earth), traditionally collected from the doorstep of a brothel in Sonagachi, north Kolkata. A widely held folk belief says people entering such establishments leave their virtue at the threshold, making the soil symbolically pure. The earth is collected with reverence and mixed with other types of clay to make the idol.For Patna’s Puja organisers, preserving this practice sustains a cultural link with Bengal even as the festival is celebrated in Bihar. The artisans bring more than their tools and expertise; they carry an inherited understanding of the materials, proportions and techniques through which the goddess takes shape.Indologist Prabuddha Biswas said the soil has religious significance as well as practical value. Fine-grained, malleable alluvial soil from the Hooghly, a distributary of the Ganga, is suitable for sculpting. Artisans from Kumartuli and Krishnanagar combine different structural clays to achieve the consistency needed to mould the idol and shape its finer features.Science expert Pradip Banerjee said the inclusion of soil from a ‘nishiddho palli’ (red-light area) also carries a deeper social meaning. Traditionally, an artisan or priest approaches a sex worker’s doorstep, bows and seeks the earth as a blessing. The ritual brings a community often marginalised by society into a sacred tradition.