KOLKATA: The Fountain of Joy in the Maidan opposite Victoria Memorial Hall has featured among the world’s 26 leading fountains listed by a popular global travel portal.
The three-tier cascading fountain in Kolkata, only the second in India after the one at Mysore’s Brindavan Gardens, is the only Indian fountain to feature on the list — prepared by travel portal loveexploring.com — that includes the iconic Trevi fountain in Rome that was completed in 1762.
Also on the list are Latona Fountain at the Palace of Versailles in France; Jet d’Eau in Geneva, Switzerland; Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas, US, and King Fahd’s Fountain in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
“The Fountain of Joy, India’s largest dancing fountain, has emerged as the city’s landmark after being featured in the prestigious World’s incredible water displays,” said a spokesperson of CESC that maintains the fountain.
The Fountain of Joy was first commissioned 30 years ago in 1991.
At the time, the city had just emerged from an era of power cuts and Rama Prasad Goenka, the chairman of the RP Goenka group, wanted to give the city something that would drive away the nightmares that the city had suffered through the 1970s and 1980s.
His desire though was to make the Fountain of Joy a landmark.
Inaugurated by then chief minister Jyoti Basu, Goenka had envisaged it to become a tourist attraction and a meeting place for artists, musicians, poets and other intellectuals.
The fountain, however, lost its charm over time and the shows stopped by the turn of the century.
With the rush of visitors gone, the area would turn into a criminal den after sundown.
Families avoided the stretch and preferred to hang out near the Victoria south gate.
It was CM Mamata Banerjee’s penchant for lights and her keenness to beautify the city so that it could rub shoulders with other megapolises that inspired CESC to revive the fountain with improved technology and visual effects in 2012.
It was integrated with a computer-embedded software that allows musical choreography with water features, light and sound with 26 pumps of different capacities.
The average water display is approximately 15,800 litres per minute, the central nozzle sprays water to a height of 25m.
The song and music sequences with dancing fountain effects are show-cased every evening from 6pm to 9pm.