The mid-week holiday

Yesterday was the final day of Ganapati Visarjan and it was a day off – the office being closed because every road and train is choc-a-bloc full of people taking their idols for immersion in any available stretch of sea.

The Plan

The mood was totally festive ever since Tuesday evening when the holiday was announced and I made all elaborate plans with a friend for going on an early morning walk/jog followed by a 10am show at Inox (they retail at Rs89 for the morning shows as opposed to Rs200 for any other show!). Shifting to a bigger flat and arranging everything has taken its toll and of course, I did not get up in the morning. And when I did, saw that there were innumerable messages and missed calls from the friend starting at 6am (jeez!) and then finally petering out at 8am (note: I woke at 1030am). Quickly browsed through the papers and found to my utter horror that I had seen ALL the movies there were to see (except the ‘Aap Ki Khatir’ – I cant stand Akshaye Khanna with hair or ‘Sandwich’, which we didn’t want to see anyway). Well begun is half done – my plans hadn’t even begun and they were squashed!

Oxford Bookstore, Churchgate

Sauntered over to Oxford, got an armful of books to read and then over to Cha bar to ruminate over them with a tea and sandwich – but that was the second let down of the day – Cha Bar now prohibits people from bringing books to the tables to browse!!!!! Fat amount of business they must be getting now – who’d want to come to a café deep inside a bookstore to drink tea and talk to people!! I mean Oxford bookstore is looking for different shapes and sizes of axes to jump on and cut itself.

First they happily go and arrange all books by the author’s last name – so you have a Jackie Collins sharing space with Vikram Chandra and so on! This has to be the most asinine way of arranging books ever! If I want to see whats on in Indian Fiction, it means I have to check each and every bookshelf to see an Indian-sounding author. And then suddenly you come across bookshelves where all management/travel/cooking books are arranged by genre. I can’t still figure out the way Oxford arranges its books – why the heck cant it class ALL books by genre? Half of the time even the staff cannot find most of the books – this salesgirl took me around for 15 minutes looking for Freakonomics before I finally spotted it on a table.

So anyway, enough ranting – Oxford will remain the worst bookstore ever but the one I frequent the most because its so damn close to my house. Picked up three books and settled on a not-so-comfortable rocking chair in the bookstore – Freakonomics, Banganga and People Watching (Desmond Morris). Banganga is this amazing book on the history of Walkeshwar/Malabar Hills area and is replete with all legends associated with the Banganga tank. I didn’t, for example, know that there’s this ‘yoni’ shaped rock called ‘Shri Gundi’ and its supposed to cleanse one of all their sins if you manage to struggle through it. Of course, noone of my stanch-Mumbaikar friends knew about it either, so I wasn’t feeling too bad about it:-D. Apparently from the map they gave, this Shri Gundi is below the Governor’s residence so access now is not possible – the book did not dwell much on its whereabouts now – so am still looking for any clues as to where exactly it is – maybe I’ll just go and chat up the priests at Walkeshwar. The Banganga book captured my attention and I went through it cover to cover and walked out feeling all groggy.

Ganesh Visarjan

I’ve been in Bombay for 2 years now and haven’t ever been to a Ganesh Visarjan – which is kind of shameful, so decided to make amends and tied up with 2 friends to go there in the evening. We took a train to Charni Road and decided to walk down Lamington road, join the processions and then back on Marine Drive. It was AWESOME! The entire atmosphere was super charged – the roads full of people and trucks and myriad kinds of idol of the God. Ganapati is one Indian god who seems to be an artist’s delight – the number of different shapes of idols we saw was mind-boggling. Elaborately decked up with a benign countenance, a happy look in his eyes and followed by millions of people to his resting place, it was quite easy to imagine all these people getting so attached to him. So the crowds were quite scary in their multitude and all dancing gaily all the way – some of the idol processions start at 11am and reach the Visarjan Sthala at like 12 in the night – which means about 13 hours of continuous dancing (Red Bull, you guys should open some promotion counters on the way!).

So we walked as a part of different processions down to the beach, where it was much more subdued. People were slowly taking down their Ganapatis and taking him deep into the water – thankfully no one drowned – the arrangements were pretty great with many boats also patrolling around.

I wish I had some pictures but the cam has been jinxed ever since sand got into it at Kihim in January and its in for repairs yet again. Guess I’ll buy a new cam now. Millions of people were thronging the Girgaum Chowpatty and it was quite ummm…reassuring to be one in the huge crush of humanity watching all those idols floating away. I guess the downside of all this being that the sea does get extremely polluted with all the chemical colours used.

Pic courtesy Amit Kulkarni's website - www.amitkulkarni.info. Thanks, buddy!

So on the whole it was a great mid-week holiday and am back to work – but then yayy, tomorrow is Friday again…damn..they should have a holiday every Wedneseday!