Ganpati pandals compete on scale every year in Bhopal, but the one at Indrapuri has gone somewhere nobody else seems to have tried. The organisers of Indrapuri Ke Raja have built their entire setup around Kantara, the film that turned Karnataka's daiva folklore into a nationwide obsession, and the result is an idol arrangement nobody visiting this festival is used to seeing.

At the centre sits Ganesha, done in the usual style with an elephant face, gold ornaments and detailed patterned attire running down to the base. That much is familiar. What isn't is who's standing next to him.

On one side is Guliga, rendered with the kind of dramatic face paint and wide, deliberately exaggerated eyes that Kantara made iconic, set against a dark textured finish and red floral touches. On the other is Panjurli Devta, styled as a warrior, complete with an elaborate headpiece, heavy jewellery and a weapon in hand, giving the figure the commanding look the film gave the spirit itself.

According to the Free Press Journal, which shared visuals of the setup, the organisers didn't stop at the idols. The pillars, the backdrop, even the smaller decorative elements around the three figures have been worked into the same theme, so that walking in feels less like entering a standard pandal and more like stepping into the kind of shrine space Kantara built its imagery around. The folk traditions of coastal Karnataka, the ones the film pulled into the mainstream two years ago, are stitched through the entire display rather than tacked on as a backdrop photo-op.

It's a fairly striking bit of crossover, a South Indian film's spiritual iconography reworked for a central Indian festival crowd that may never have set foot near Karnataka's coast. But that's been Kantara's afterlife for a while now, its visual grammar of daivas and possession showing up in places its story never touched.

The pandal's grand arrival ceremony was scheduled for 8 pm today, with a DJ set built into the celebrations, and the aarti was to follow at the same hour. Devotees have been told they can walk through the Kantara-themed setup once the rituals wrap.

Whether other pandals in the city try to match or top this next year is anyone's guess. For now, Bhopal has one Ganpati mandal where Guliga and Panjurli Devta are getting equal billing with Bappa himself, and that alone has been enough to pull crowds through Indrapuri this week.