Next: about 23 to 25 Dec 2026
Poush Mela, Santiniketan
A winter fair at Santiniketan where Bengal sells kantha sarees, batik and block prints beside Baul songs.
What is worn for Poush Mela, Santiniketan
Poush Mela is a fair held at Santiniketan in West Bengal in the Bengali month of Poush, in the cold weeks around the end of December. It began in the nineteenth century and is run by Visva-Bharati. Craft stalls from across Bengal fill the grounds. Women come in cotton and silk sarees with shawls, and the stalls sell kantha stitched sarees and stoles, Santiniketan batik, block printed cotton and leather goods. There are also Baul singers, who are the wandering mystic singers of Bengal, and food stalls of pithe, winter rice cakes. The fair starts on 7 Poush, which is 23 December, and runs for a few days. Hand embroidered kantha is the weave most worth looking for.
The sarees
Also part of it, and being written: Kantha (Running stitch embroidery on reused cloth, a Bengal craft.).
Written by the EveryPallu desk with AI assistance. Background: "Poush Mela" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Batik: Fpangestuphotographer, CC BY-SA 4.0, source