Cities: Bombay (Mumbai) – “Getting Immersed” in Ganesh Chaturthi
As a multi faith society, the calendar in India is full of festivals, but in the state of Maharashtra one of the biggest is Ganesh Chaturthi – the birthday of the elephant-headed Hindu deity, Ganesh.
I was lucky enough to have a couple of long work trips to Mumbai, spending almost 2 months there. That decent amount of time, living and working amongst local friends and colleagues, gave me weekends and public holidays free to explore many areas of the city as well as other regions. My friends were very generous with their hospitality and I was welcomed into their homes and walked the city with them. These will form the basis of future posts, but this one will concentrate on my time there during this amazing festival.
First, a little bit about Ganesh himself as he will feature prominently in these stories. He has an elephant head and four arms. His origin story varies, but one is that he was modelled out of clay as a perfect boy by Parvati (the goddess of power, devotion, beauty and love) to look after her. This protection meant that he was involved in a battle with her partner Shiva, who became jealous and beheaded him during the fight. He replaced his head with one from an elephant and according to some versions, he gave him his traditional fat tummy to make him less attractive.
The festival takes place on a moving date linked to other celebrations, at a point between late August and late September, which luckily coincided with my visit. One key aspect of the festival is the creation of clay/ plaster Murtis, large models of Ganesh, the public ones of which are installed on large temporary outdoor staging called pandals. After 10 days of worship the Murtis are carried to a water source to be immersed. They dissolve and the clay disperses and the festival is over for another year. Whilst being an ancient ceremony, the festival came to great prominence at the end of the 19th century as a protest against the banning of large public gatherings under the Raj. As faith-related gatherings were exempt from these rules, then these types of celebrations became a political as well as a religious statement.
During my time in Mumbai I stayed in some apartments at a plush hotel bordering the lake in the Powai district of the city. I took to exploring by train and by foot most evenings, outside of the areas tourists may visit. This often caused alarm (or at least surprise) in my colleagues the next day – as many places were a bit off the beaten track, and where I was the only foreigner!
Festival Day 1 – Star for a Day
After getting back from the office, out of my window I had a fabulous view across Powai Lake, created in 1891 as a source of water for Bombay. Here I often watched fishermen row out to its centre to sit for a few hours. Some of them swam out with lifebuoys wrapped around them for flotation, which I always thought was particularly brave, given the water is home to a colony of Indian Marsh Crocodiles!
Whilst a peaceful location, the background noise of the city was never far away, the music of beeping horns a 24 hour gift. Tonight though, amongst those, the sound of fevered drumming came and went in the breeze. It was time to investigate!
The Renaissance Hotel and Apartments are very well guarded, given the impact of the Mumbai terrorist attack a few years earlier, but I had got to know the security personnel pretty well and they didn’t bat an eye lid as I strolled down the long, wide leafy drive that separated this “compound” from the city. At the end gates I took the road that leads towards the Aarey Milk Colony, an area of forest, farmland and tribal hamlets which supply produce to markets in the city. To get there I had to cross beneath the huge water pipelines which link the various lakes in this area. They also act as a sort of barrier between the richer areas around the lake and the shanty villages beyond.
Driven by the continuous rhythms, I continued my walk, maybe with a little step and dance in my stride as my body started to synch up with the beats! I stood on a street corner and watched a large crowd who had gathered around a group of men drumming in a circle. As the only foreigner in this scene, I was quickly observed by one of the drummers, who beckoned me over and gave me the stick which was used to beat his Dhol drum. I beat the drum with some enthusiasm which seemed to make the crowd happy! They then joined me in some “dancing” in the crowd circle which my “acid house” rave style was merged with some local funk to the driving rhythm. No drugs were involved! After about 10 minutes of this intense activity I drifted towards the edge of the action as the crowd of several thousand lining th, at least not on my end! The road split to allow a couple of vehicles through. I took the above shot as a BEST bus followed a scooter rider. My camera at the time was not very good, but I think the blur of the motorbike speeding past adds some cool atmosphere!
The crowd fell back across the road, but were soon parted again by a flatbed truck. It was a typical local truck, with a cab decorated in many colours. Beads, flower garlands and several bright polished metal artefacts covered the bonnet and tread boards. Animal horns hung from the door mirrors and various silks and other fabrics lined the interior. Beneath a cover in the back, sat a 3 metre high plaster idol of Ganesh himself. The vehicle moved at about 1 mile an hour surrounded by the crowd.
The driver, Raj, spotted me in the crowd and called me to the cab window and shook my hand. I saw he had a boy with him, who looked about 8 years old so I guessed Raj wasn’t going to murder me just yet. Instead of stabbing me with the big knife around his neck, Raj stopped the truck and beckoned me towards the passenger door and the boy moved over. He then gestured for me to get in! I wondered what my colleagues back at the Investment Bank would have thought about this kind offer, and hesitated for a moment, but the son looked so happy that I thought “well why not”, and climbed into the cab. Raj had a very splendid silver neckless on a thick chain. He took this off and put it over my head like I had won a medal at the Olympics. The boy looked even prouder as if he was my coach!
We then proceeded at a very slow speed up the road, surrounded by the huge crowd. Sat in my ceremonial jewellery, raised above the crowd I became a movie star for a few minutes. Hundreds of people banged on the bonnet, every few yards Raj would shout to friends in the crowd, shout some names to me, and they would reach in through the open window to shake my hand and cheer. I was either a star of the show or an unknowing human sacrifice like some Hindi movie version of The Wicker Man. I did not see any stone altars or any burning human effigies up ahead, so I continued to enjoy the ride. Over the 10 mins we headed through the crowd, I was furnished with a beer and a chicken sandwich. The latter I was debating about, but the young lad ate from the same batch so I gave it a go – luckily my stomach is quite strong and I’d already had a couple of weeks of gut acclimatisation !
We arrived at the pandal, by which time we were at the head of the crowd. Raj beckoned for me to get out and we went round the back and I grabbed one of the poles and rested it on my shoulder to help lift the statue and carry it towards the temple area. We delicately placed it on the plinth that was ready for it. At this point a chap started to have an argument with Raj and pointing at the neckless. I assumed it had some sort of high value / meaning, and the guy possibly thought it had been given to me as a gift. To help ease the tension I took it off and gave it to Raj, which seemed to de-escalate things a bit!
By now it was late so I gestured to Raj that it was time for me to head back and started to walk. Although it was less than a mile, he was quite insistent that he was going to give me a lift home, so eventually I gave in and accepted. I wondered what the machine gun toting guards would think as we trundled up the drive towards the hotel! Thankfully they recognised me as we came close and I smiled politely as the dogs sniffed round the tyres and the mirrors on long sticks looked for any suspect devices under the truck. They were obviously thinking “WTF!!”
A few minutes later I was back in the apartment. My 10 days of Ganesh Chaturthi had truly kicked off in style!
A Private Puja
The great thing about staying in the apartments (rather than a room at the hotel) was that it was full of long term residents, expats or people from other cities working for a period in Mumbai. So, a few days later my neighbour invited me in for his family’s personal celebration. This was particularly interesting as he had an expert priest who was coming in to execute the various rituals with him.
On the table was his idol, under a cloth it was then revealed – elaborately dressed with flowers and lights. We then began the ceremony, with rituals and chanting performed in a strict order. There was a high degree of complexity, which was why my friend had taken advice from this leader well schooled in the activities. There was such a lot to it (offerings, chants etc) that the final part seeks blessings and asks Ganesh for forgiveness in case any mistakes are made! It was a very beautiful and solemn sequence of ceremonies and we had a nice meal afterwards.
Day 10 – Visarjan at Powai Lake
During my stay I was working UK hours which meant going to the office around lunchtime local time. This was a bit strange for me, I was used to the leisure time being after work, here it was mainly before the start of the working day. I was thus at work still on the evening of the 10th day when the processions started leaving from all over the city to take the idols to water. With most of my colleagues I stepped out of our office in the Hiranandani Gardens district to watch the parade of idols go past on their way to the lake.
Finishing work early I jogged down to the lakeside to a scene of total pandemonium! Hundreds of trucks had formed a line parked up along the waterfront road. Thousands lined the banks. Those trucks that had been able to join the very slow moving queue were covered in people. Impromptu marching bands of drummers and whistlers filled any gaps in between the vehicles. People hung off any hold point on the trucks, and if there were none left hung on ropes from trucks. Flags waved, a million horns beeped and drums continued. European style health and safety was not a feature here!
I moved with the crowd to find a vantage point on the lake front. Many idols at a time were being placed into the water where they submerged and drifted away from the dockside. Where trucks couldn’t get to the waterside due to traffic, homemade joists and cranes lifted the huge icons above the crowd and over the water – often with people flying above me, hanging onto ropes for dear life! Bright spotlights illuminated the scene.
The tops of statutes bobbed in the water and formed a thick slick of clay and plaster as Lord Ganesh left the celebrations for another year. What a spectacle.
Later my travels would take me on to Goa, Delhi, Agra, the Taj Mahal and hill stations full of Victorian bungalows. I would visit the huge slums, visiting houses and makeshift factories to learn about the incredible industries that exist there. I would run with the leopards in the jungle. I would see one of India’s most famous cricketers score his 10,000 run as I stood on the angled roof of one of the world’s most iconic stadiums. I would meditate beneath the bones of the Buddha underneath the biggest unsupported dome in the world. I would visit islands where huge cathedral sized interior spaces had been carved out of the solid rock, and of course I would hang out of a second class train channeling my inner MIA, singing “Paper Planes” from the Slumdog soundtrack. All this though is for future stories, so stay tuned!
