From Film Rolls to Cloud Storage: Digitizing 30 Years of Kolkata’s Heritage

How a Father Daughter Duo Build the Documented Digital Archive

Durga Puja of Kolkata, India has evolved into the world’s largest open-air art exhibition. Each year, thousands of neighborhoods transform into temporary walk-through museums, featuring intricate “themes” that range from social commentary to art and culture to heritage and architectural marvels. Millions of people witness these pandals live across the streets of Kolkata every year for five days.

Building a legacy is one thing; witnessing it being digitized by the next generation is another entirely.

For 30 years — starting from my college days in 1995 — I have been documenting the ephemeral art of Kolkata’s Durga Puja. I was here in Kolkata, India, most of the years in the last three decades. What began as a personal hobby evolved into a massive archive of thousands of photos, prints, and negatives.

Today, on the occasion of Poila Baisakh (Bengali New Year 1433), I am proud to announce that this archive finally has a digital home: www.durgapujachronicles.com

The Journey: A Product Lifecycle through Teenage Eyes

While the idea I nurtured for long, the execution belongs to my daughter, Sharanya. As a teenager who prefers code over Facebook, she took on the challenge of building this platform from scratch.

Watching her navigate the full project lifecycle has been a revelation. As an AI professional, I’ve managed countless projects, but seeing a young mind handle everything — from data schema design to cloud deployment — provided a fresh perspective on how the “democratization of tech” is actually playing out.

The Tech Stack: AI-Native Development

We decided to keep this 100% in-house. It wasn’t just about “making a website”; it was about building a scalable architecture for a growing community archive.

• Backend: Python
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Infrastructure: Hosted on AWS with S3
• DevOPs managed by EC2 Beanstalk and RDS
• IDE & Tooling: VS Code, but with a modern twist.
• Design: Figma Make

The real game-changer was the use of AI coding agents like Claude Code. Sharanya used these tools not just to write boilerplate, but to problem-solve architectural hurdles and optimize the conversion of 30 years of fragmented data formats into a clean, searchable web friendly database. It’s a testament to how AI is enabling a “team of one” to produce enterprise-grade output.

Value Creation & Community

With Durga Puja’s UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status, the need for community-driven documentation is critical. We are building this one year at a time — meticulously converting old prints and negatives into a living history.

But a community is only as great as its members. We’ve built a contribution engine where anyone can upload their own photos and stories. We want this to be the definitive “People’s Archive” of the festival.

What’s Next?

We have launched with 7 years and 1,000+ high-quality photos. We are now working on the “Historical Patch” — migrating the late 90s and early 2000s archives, along with deep-dive stories and video content.

I invite my network of tech leaders, culture enthusiasts, and storytellers to explore the site. Your feedback on the UI/UX and the archival mission would be invaluable to us.

Explore the Chronicles: www.durgapujachronicles.com

Shubho Nobobarsho to everyone! Let’s preserve our past using the tools of the future. 🌸

TechLeadership #AI #CloudComputing #HeritagePreservation #UNESCO #DurgaPuja #Kolkata #FullStackDevelopment #GenerativeAI #ProductLifecycle