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Two days ago I thought I would make my way to either Girgaum Chowpatty or Juhu on Anant Chaturdashi today, the last day of Ganeshotsav, usually the tenth or the eleventh day of the festival but this year it was the twelth day, to watch brightly painted Ganapatis converge on the beach by their hundreds, maybe by their thousands. No one has ever dared count how many. The numbers, like Mumbai, continue to swell each year.
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Later that night images from two years ago reeled out in a slide show, transporting me amidst legions of devotees as they cried out hoarse, ‘Ganapati Bappa Moraya, Phudchya Varshi Lavkar Ya’, exhorting the elephant-headed god to return soon next year as they prepared to immerse him in the seas off Juhu in Andheri.
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It was at Girgaum that I first saw the Lalbaug cha Raja make his way to the beach late in the evening. I was in the thick of it those two years, hanging onto my camera as I jostled through dense crowds for vantage points. To be swallowed by the multitudes thronging the approach is to be released from the present for a foray into the future as chants rise with the breeze ‘Phudchya Varshi Lavkar Ya’ (Return Soon the Next Year).
The next year, 2007, I could not make it to the seas on the last day of the Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations much as I wanted to. The year came and went and I stayed home on Anant Chaturdashi, the day when offices close early to enable employees to reach their homes before festival crowds bring vehicular traffic to a standstill. There were urgent matters that needed sorting out in those uncertain days when I wondered if the overcast skies would ever part anytime soon to let some sunshine in. They did, coinciding with the end of the monsoons in late September.
This year was no different for I didn’t make it to the seas today either, the last day of Ganesh Chaturthi, to watch animated throngs of devotees as they wind down the approach to the beach in their hundreds and thousands, carrying idols of the elephant-headed god decked in flowers. It was pouring outside so I stayed back home.
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Many families immerse the idol in nearby water bodies after one and half days. The duration varies between one and half, five, seven, ten, eleven, twelve, and “even twenty-two days,” a taxi driver informed me the other day as he bypassed an inside lane to avoid groups of festive revelers. “I avoid driving much during the festival week,” he said. “There’re too many traffic jams caused by revelers.”
Passing Matunga he pointed out a Ganapati pandal set back from the road and said, “That’s Nana Patekar’s,” before continuing, “flowers worth 5,000 – 6,000 rupees are delivered to the pandal each day for use in prayers and decorating the pandal.”
“Does he live here?” I asked him, curious to find out if the Bollywood star, known for the temperamental roles he’s essayed over the years, felt at home in the bustle of the street away from tinsel town.
“No, but during Ganesh Chaturthi he is said to come here for the duration of the festival to the Sarvajanik Ganesh pandal he organises, after all this is where he used to live before he became a star,” the taxi driver replied.
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I’ve fond memories of the festival growing up in Goa. Schools broke for vacations on the eve of the festival, lasting the entire duration. It was a time to make merry, visiting as many Ganapatis as one could and accompanying an equal number on the days they were immersed in wells. We kept a count of the Ganapatis we saw. But it was in Mumbai that I saw the festival at a scale I had not previously imagined, down to an actual elephant making rounds of the town outside the local railway station this weekend.
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Within moments it drew the attention of commuters, one of whom thought nothing of feeding it the lot of apples he must have purchased only a little while earlier.
Children gathered to watch the elephant bless those who sought its blessings, raising its trunk and touching them lightly on the head.
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A Ganesh pandal lay only a few metres away, to one side of the entrance to the local railway station. The significance of the presence of the elephant during the festival celebrating the elephant-god was not lost on passers-by as they folded their hands in prayer to the pachyderm.
Public installations of the deity, also know as Sarvajanik Ganapati, are not restricted to street corners alone. They are also to be found in housing societies.
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In the days leading up to the Ganesh festival this year it was not uncommon to find groups of local youths by railway tracks practicing drumming for the impending festival. I kept a watch for them as the train neared where they were usually to be found. They rarely missed a practice session. They were to be found on city roads as well, going their way. On one such ‘immersion day’ in Dadar, the fifth day of the festival if I recollect well, a taxi laden with drums ferrying drummers to their designated spot pulled up alongside at a traffic signal. I’m not aware of the price they charge to accompany the deity to where it is immersed.
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Every now and then on the road outside cars made their way past us. Through the window we saw colourful idols of Ganapati resting in the arms of family members in the bucket seat. Others carried the deity in the open boot of the car, the door raised up. In the days that followed, Mumbai and the adjoining suburbs reverberated to festivities until today, the day of the last journey of the elephant-headed god.
As I sit at my desk keying in this post fairly late in the night, I can still hear the last lot of firecrackers marking the last journey of Mumbai’s favourite god while fervent devotees accompanying the deity chant ‘Phudchya Varshi Lavkar Ya’, exhorting him to ‘return soon the next year’.