Kolkata : Asian Paints Sharad Shamman, Kolkata’s most iconic celebration of Durga Pujo creativity, completes 40 years in 2025with a landmark project called “Cholte Cholte 40” that transforms Kolkata’s yellow taxis into moving time capsules. With richly painted exteriors and interiors crafted as immersive environments using wallpapers, fabrics, and textures, each taxi becomes a multisensory portal into its decade, crowned by the Asian Paints crown as a symbol of elevating the everyday. Together, these taxis carry four decades of Asian Paints Sharad Shamman’ cultural archive back into the streets of Kolkata, reaffirming its motto: ঐতিহ্যের পূজো, উদ্দীপনার উৎসব (A celebration of tradition, a festival of fervour).
This unique tribute to Kolkata was unveiled in the presence of Amit Syngle, MD and CEO of Asian Paints Ltd., and acclaimed West Bengal personalities Abir Chatterjee and Sauraseni Maitra.
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. The inaugural edition honoured three committees with the Best Puja award, and over the years Asian Paints Sharad Shamman expanded its categories to mirror the festival’s growth: Best Puja (Shrestho Pujo), Discovery of the Year (Bochorer Bismoy), and Best Artisan (Shrestho Protimashilpi). In doing so, Asian Paints Sharad Shamman has built a four-decade archive that charts Pujo’s transformation.
To mark these four decades, Asian Paints turned to another Kolkata emblem — the yellow taxi — a vehicle that has been inseparable from the city’s Pujo journeys yet is now slowly disappearing from its streets. For decades, these taxis ferried entire families on pandal-hopping trails, transported artisans with straw and clay from Kumartuli, and carried Asian Paints Sharad Shamman judges through crowded para lanes. Reimagining them as art was both homage and reinvention: forty taxis, each representing a decade of the awards, were transformed into travelling archives. Inside the taxis, the intimacy of the pandal is recreated: curtains and wallpapers from the Asian Paints Royale range, under-seat lights, UV accents, reflective finishes of Royale Glitz. Outside, the yellow remains visible, layered with each decade’s motifs and crowned with the “Crown of Pujo” — a quiet nod to both Asian Paints Sharad Shamman’s prestige and to Asian Paints’ own high-sheen legacy.
The interiors of the taxis were designed using wallpapers and fabrics from Asian Paints’ own collections, paired with Royale Glitz paints to create immersive environments reflecting each decade. Wallpapers were drawn from the Paris–Calcutta series by Sabyasachi, the La Vie series, the Magnolia Home series, the Heartland series by Sabyasachi, and the Solace series. Fabrics were sourced from across Asian Paints’ extensive textile ranges, including the Paris–Calcutta series by Sabyasachi.
Together, these collections — integrated with Royale Glitz finishes — ensured that every taxi interior felt both authentic to its decade.
Across four decades, Pujo has changed in form and scale, and each taxi reinterprets that shift through the lens of a contemporary artist–
For 1985–1995, Bikramjit Paul paints the decade when Pujo shifted from elite to Sarbojonin, community. The artwork here captures nostalgic elements like the 1st advertisement from Asian Paints Sharad Shamman featuring Gattu to the iconic radio sets & celebrates cultural nuances as they found a keen place in this era.
For 1995–2005, Meenakshi Sengupta captured the period of Chandannagar lights, arches and curves, pandal-hopping, flower markets and food stalls crowding the streets. Sengupta paints this decade like a theatre: tram lines over Howrah Bridge, families crossing in anticipation, neon gods flickering above the pandal gates. The Bengali Rock music also finds a tasteful presence. This decade made Pujo a grand social celebration.
For 2005–2015, Sayan Mukherjee captures Pujo’s immersion & thematic excellence. This was when pandals became experiences. His taxi frames the goddess holding the Earth, with Royale Glitz curtain-raiser motifs catching the light — a nod both to the spectacle of the time and to the brand that has walked beside it. This era was the era of artists & corporate sponsorships as Pujo Scale & Themes became larger than life!
For 2015–2025, Srishti Guptaroy takes on the Pujo of today: multi-sensory, global, digital. Projection mapping across pandals, live performances and concerts spilling into the night, people experiencing the goddess through phone screens. She captures how this decade has been marked by an explosion of ideas — artists and organisers pushing the limits of what a pandal can be. Yet her work also reclaims Bengal’s icons — the tiger, the owl, chai glasses, alpona — reimagined in contemporary idioms. Guptaroy’s style, playful yet precise, makes her taxi feel both cosmopolitan and unmistakably Kolkata.
Speaking on the occasion, Amit Syngle, MD and CEO of Asian Paints Ltd. said, “When Asian Paints Sharad Shamman began in 1985, it set out to honour the imagination of Pujo. Forty years later, it has become a living chronicle of Kolkata’s creative spirit. 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. An everyday companion of Pujo that has carried families, artisans, and stories across the city. This is our “Royale Tribute to Kolkata”.
We are deeply grateful to Kolkata for allowing us to walk alongside its creativity for four decades. This project is about giving the joy back to the City of Joy — returning forty years of Asian Paints Sharad Shamman to the streets where it belongs and affirming what Asian Paints has always believed: that creativity must live not only in galleries or in homes, but in the everyday rhythm of life.”
The taxi project builds on a thought first explored in 2023, when Asian Paints marked 150 years of Kolkata’s tramways by turning a bogie on the Tollygunge–Ballygunge route into a moving artwork. The exteriors chronicled the story of Sharad Shamman and the makers of Pujo, while its interiors combined cane craft, alpona, storytelling, and the sheen of Royale Glitz to create an immersive journey. Augmented reality extended this experience beyond the tracks, bringing the tram alive both in the city and on screens. With the taxis, Asian Paints Sharad Shamman carries this gesture forward— shifting from rails to roads, from the historic tram to the ever-present cab. Both icons are fading from Kolkata’s landscape, and through them Asian Paints continues a larger project: to turn everyday emblems into living archives of the city’s creativity, ensuring they remain carriers of memory and imagination.
From a newspaper advert in 1985 to taxis on the streets in 2025, Asian Paints Sharad Shamman has stayed true to its purpose: to celebrate creativity in Pujo, and to walk with the city that makes it possible. Cholte cholte chālīsh — forty years, and in every step, a story of Kolkata’s creativity that has become our own.
“For us at XXL, the tram and now the yellow taxi projects for Asian Paints have been about extending the ethos of Sharad Shamman, celebrating creative excellence in Pujo and returning it to the city in new ways. But beyond the archive, this has also been an act of gratitude. We thank Asian Paints for their trust and custodianship, the four artists for their distinct visions, and every single person — from fabricators and carpenters to painters and installers — who made this possible. Above all, this project is also an homage to the yellow taxi drivers of Kolkata, who have carried generations through Pujo nights. In giving these taxis a second life as cultural carriers, we also honour their labour, their memory, and their place in the city’s story.” - Rutva Trivedi, Design Director, XXL Collective.
For four decades, Asian Paints Sharad Shamman has celebrated the true spirit of Durga Puja in Kolkata — from honouring the creativity of pandals to recognising the tireless efforts of artisans, sculptors, and committees who bring them to life; and they remain committed to celebrating this spirit with depth, creativity, and connection to the city.
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