Saturday, April 14, 2012

Ganpati Visarjan


(old article)
MUMBAI/BOMBAY
Festive Disasters.

It takes me more or less fifty rupees to reach home from the station, by rickshaw. But yesterday when I saw the B.E.S.T. bus that takes hardly seven rupees, I wasn’t all that happy. It was so crowded. There was no space to get inside from the back door. Yet, the bus waited at the bus-stop. Actually, now that I think of it I’m not sure whether the driver halted out of duty, or if it was just the traffic jam. Never mind though, I feel bad enough for him. After watching my luck die out as two jam-packed buses passed by over a span of 45minutes, I got in through the front door of the very next bus and I’m still confused whether I was happy to have gotten in or irritated, for having found just bare minimum leg space even after flaunting ounces of patience. Perhaps, it was stupidity. In Mumbai, you can never say. So, this is a story of me, and my one-and-half hour bus ride, or rather bus stand-still, on one of my days of extremely bad luck married to a great delay, which caused me to get stuck in an awful lot traffic during Ganpati Visarjan. I see you’re feeling bad already. Well, thank you.



So there I was, trapped and suffocated in the confines of a damaged red bus, relocating about say a hundred people, all of whom were loud, with special emphasis on the little boy who cried throughout, aunties who seemed pretty happy gossiping to glory, and a college kid who was talking to her boyfriend, and another who was yelling at hers. So basically, standing there without an iPod and with a dead phone, I learnt a lot about so many people, only I didn’t care to make friends with them. I couldn’t help but eavesdrop, considering the scene outside didn’t change at all for the first half an hour. I mean, I’m seeing this one tall green tree, and ten minutes later, I’m seeing the one beside it. Then, as the driver went crazy with all the honking business and somehow dragged us a little closer to the Visarjan area, the multitude of people became visible. Every car had a Ganpati Idol and the road was filled with devotees dancing to the sound of dis-coordinated dholaks, and highly inappropriate Bollywood music. And then there were little kids screaming ‘Ganpati Bappa’ and waiting, like me, knowing everybody else would sing along a ‘Morya’. They were also distributing a variety of tasty sweets. Sure, they were giving, but very highly inconsiderate. They needn’t walk, and everything would go smoothly. But it’s this thing about India, where anything you wish to express cannot and will not be condemned. Be it happiness, sorrow, or devotion.

Trapped in the traffic, I sure as hell lost my mind. However when the crying kid got off the bus, as did quite a few other uncles, predicting that walking was by far a better option, my frame of mind began to change. The idols were decorated in awe. The accessories it adorned were extravagant. I didn’t notice the people in the cars, but the ones dancing along in the procession, around a majestical idol perched on a cart didn’t seem too well off. Their saris shone in craziness. It was completely overdone. The lungis seemed messy. Yet they were having a hundred and ten percent more fun than the gaddi-walas ever would. The kids blew all sorts of fanatic horns and whistles. It was insane. The gajras seemed like a pagdi on the heads of the native women, but in that traditional frenzy, they completely depicted India. The rangoli colours, specifically the bright pink, and that typical aunty laugh-cum-scream, little wonders reacting like they’re watching a game of cricket, and uncles smoking a thin beedi, and everybody all dressed, yet wearing cheap chappals to keep the kicchad off their clothes, man, it sure is home.



As the bus took a detour to get to the final destination, guided by the ever-so-healthy Mumbai Traffic Police officials, the noise and a bit of it that was music, both lowered down. The driver took us through the swarm of potholes and the journey began to feel like a boat ride as we jumped and swayed in unison. The drizzle began outside the shut windows. I’m not saying I enjoy covering a distance of 15 minutes in two hours, but I can’t deny that it is but a part and parcel of living in a metropolitan city like Mumbai, with a crowd of people from every part of the country coming here imagining a Victoria Terminus station they saw in some movie and hoping their life would change. And you never know, sometimes it does.

It isn’t just about the curve of a Marine Drive, or the tall buildings and the money minting opportunities, or about fancy colleges and well-clad people, and expensive cars. This mess is Mumbai - giving, caring, sheltering everybody who wishes to call her home, regardless of her increasing dearth of space. What do you know, yeh hai Bumbai meri jaan.