In the bustling city of Kolkata, colour is not background but a lifestyle. From the emblematic black-and-yellow taxis that used to dart through its traffic, to the alpona motifs curling across para lanes during its revered Durgo Pujo, the city thrives on chromatic expression and release. The Pujo itself—an amalgam of devotion, artistry and collective celebration—has been a fervour where colour is both medium and message. This year, as Asian Paints Sharad Shamman, ‘Kolkata’s most iconic celebration of Durga Pujo creativity’, completes four decades, it paid homage to the city’s vibrant spirit through a project as gestural as the festival itself: transforming the disappearing yellow taxis of Kolkata, India, into moving canvases of cultural memory.

Asian Paints’ Cholte Cholte 40 (Cholte Cholte chālīs) initiative turned 40 kali-peeli (black-yellow) taxis into ‘time capsules’, their interiors and exteriors narrating the journey of Pujo, Kolkata’s identity and its creative and cultural expression across four decades. As the brand’s press release notes, “Together, these taxis carry four decades of Asian Paints Sharad Shamman’s cultural archive back into the streets of Kolkata, reaffirming its motto: ঐতিহ্যের পূজো, উদ্দীপনার উৎসব (A celebration of tradition, a festival of fervour)."

“Asian Paints Sharad Shamman was instituted in 1985 with a newspaper advertisement that redefined how the city viewed its festival. For the first time, Pujo was recognised as an act of creativity and design, not only devotion,” notes Asian Paints, India’s leading and Asia’s second-largest paint company. “Reimagining them as art was both homage and reinvention: 40 taxis, each representing a decade of the awards, were transformed into travelling archives.”

Speaking on the occasion, Amit Syngle, MD & CEO of Asian Paints Ltd., observed: “For us at Asian Paints, Kolkata has always been more than a city; it has been a muse, shaping our understanding of colour as culture and of homes as worlds of meaning. On this milestone year, the yellow taxi felt like the most fitting tribute.” For a city where these taxis once ferried entire families across pandals, artisans carrying straw and clay from Kumartuli and Sharad Shamman judges through bustling lanes, this act was both poignant and celebratory.

The taxis were designed as immersive interiors, where ‘the intimacy of the pandal is recreated’—layering wallpapers, textiles and Royale Glitz finishes from Asian Paints’ own collections. Curtains and fabrics from the Paris–Calcutta and Heartland series by Sabyasachi, along with Magnolia Home and La Vie wallpapers, create distinct atmospheres for each decade. As Syngle told STIR at the project’s launch in Kolkata earlier this month, “We took all the taxis and looked at doing their exteriors and interiors in the spirit of the decades in terms of what the transformation and evolution was all about, as a real, strong tribute to the tradition, heritage and festiveness of this occasion to come alive.”

An everyday companion of Pujo that has carried families, artisans and stories across the city. This is our ‘Royale Tribute to Kolkata’. – Amit Syngle, MD & CEO of Asian Paints Ltd.

A contemporary Indian artist interpreted each of the four decades: Bikramjit Paul reimagines 1985–1995, when Pujo expanded from elite celebration to community expression and included the first advertisement from Asian Paints Sharad Shamman; Meenakshi Sengupta animates the social theatre of 1995–2005, where Chandannagar lights, arches and curves, pandal-hopping, flower markets and food stalls collided with neon lights, tramlines and Bengali rock which defined the festivities; Sayan Mukherjee captures the grandeur of 2005–2015, when pandals became immersive spectacles. Here, the artist frames the goddess holding the earth, with Royale Glitz curtain-raise motifs caught in light; and Srishti Guptaroy reflects the 2015–2025 era of digital, multi-sensory, global Pujo. Both the cultural and the modern coalesced in her portrayal, from people experiencing the goddess through phone screens to reclaiming Bengal’s icons: the tiger, owl, alpona and chai glasses.

As Syngle puts it, “[This] was not just about esteemed devotion but also about creativity, design, the whole area of making it social, thematic, larger than life.” The taxis, like the Pujo pandals, remind us that Kolkata’s creativity has always been expansive—stretching from the orthodox to the digital, from the local to the global. The evolution of Pujo reflects the city’s embrace of change while holding onto its roots.

By placing these moving archives back on the streets, Asian Paints reaffirms a simple belief: that art and memory belong not only in museums or galleries but in everyday rhythms. In doing so, the project echoes the company’s enduring ethos, that colour does not just live on walls or canvases, but in the lived, shared experience of the city. In Kolkata, as in life, colour lives in the everyday.