WATCH | Quiet Dies a Craft: Traditional Bengal Boat Making Documentary 2024
| Video Credit:
Reporting and narration: Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay; Videography: Jayanta Shaw; Editing: Samson Ronald K., Kavya Pradeep M; Team Frontline: Abhinav Chakraborty, Saatvika Radhakrishna,
and Mridula V.; Produced By: Jinoy Jose P.
In West Bengal’s Shyampur, 74-year-old master craftsman Panchanan Mandal represents a rare expertise—the art of building “chhot” boats, high-speed wooden vessels that dominated Bengal’s waterways for centuries. This documentary captures the last active traditional boat maker and team as they navigate the end of their generational craft.
Chhot boats are traditional wooden vessels that were once the pride of Bengal’s rivers, especially around the Rupnarayan and Hooghly regions. Named after the Bengali word “to run,” these V-shaped boats were built to cut through deep waters with impressive speed, serving both fishermen and traders. For generations, skilled craftsmen like Panchanan Mandal constructed these boats using various types of wood, following time-honoured techniques and rituals that included praying to the wood before cutting it.
Today, these boats have almost disappeared from Bengal’s waters. The rivers have become too shallow, and motorised boats have taken over. The last traditional chhot boat was built about 30 years ago, until recently when Mandal and his sons constructed one final vessel as part of a heritage documentation project. While this boat was meant to be displayed in a maritime museum, it now sits unused—a symbol of a dying craft that once defined life along Bengal’s waterways.
