Kolkata's Pride 'Fountain of Joy' Ranks among World's Best

During the Calcutta-300 Celebrations, Mr. R P Goenka, Chairman, CESC, decided to gift a musical fountain to the city which was inaugurated in the Maidan in 1991. Now this 30-year old musical fountain has been listed among World’s 26 Leading fountains by a very popular Global Travel Portal. The three-tier cascading fountain in Kolkata, the second in India after the one at Mysore’s Brindavan Gardens, the only Indian fountain to be featured in this list prepared by the portal loveexploring.com, mentioned along with the iconic Trevi fountain in Rome that was completed in 1762.

Other fountains mentioned in the list include Fountain of Wealth in Singapore, Unisphere Fountain in New York, Jet d'Eau in Switzerland, Giant Wild Goose Pagoda Fountains in China, Magic Water Circuit in Peru, Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas etc. So, it is obvious that the people in City of Joy will be very happy to see their city’s name among those.

The ‘Fountain of Joy’ was inaugurated by the then CM Jyoti Basu. After that, CM Mamata Banerjee, inspired CESC to revive the fountain in 2012, complete with improved technology and visual effects. Today, the average water display is approximately 15,800 litres per minute and the central nozzle sprays water to a height of 25m. Now it has 150 channels available for water and light effects whereas previously it had only 20 channels for water. The concept of three-tier fountain pool, with musical fountain in the upper pool surrounded by architectural and dynamic fountains in the intermediate and lower pools, is quite unique in this subcontinent.

The Fountain of Joy has a centre-fed circular water screen of 6 metre height and 18 metre width. In the upper pool, the Fountain of Joy has 99 water effects, while the intermediate pool has 20 water effects and another 30 special water effects in the lower pool. It comes with an enormous number of lights as also LED and PAR lamps, as also high watt reflectors, capable of constantly changing the colours to make the fountain attractive and eye-catching. The Fountain of Joy is integrated with ultra-fast technology, in which water effects will be controlled by the pneumatically assisted solenoid valves, capable of opening and shutting 12 times in a second, thereby resulting in water shooting in air at a spectacular speed.

Fountain of Joy is located just opposite to the Victoria Memorial Hall of Kolkata. The track and music sequences with dancing fountain results are show-cased each night from 6pm to 9pm.