Ganesh Pal's workshop is a six-foot-wide corridor between a tea stall and a motorcycle repair shop on Howrah's Banstala Lane. By noon, one backboard will show Durga in full battle stance — ten arms in vermilion and gold, her lion mid-roar in kelly green against a royal blue sky. He will finish it before evening tea.
A Painting Tradition Without a Gallery
"The backboard is a small temple. Paint it like one, even if the rider only sees the back of it."
— Ganesh Pal, Backboard Painter
Each rear panel serves as advertisement, spiritual protection, and personal expression — a billboard moving through Kolkata at walking pace. The tradition descends from Kalighat scroll painters who worked the same riverbank in the 1830s, translating mythological scenes into bold forms anyone could read.