Sunday Snippets
By Venkatesh Raghavan
As I watched a very low-key immersion festival to commemorate the 10-day-event’s end, I recalled what Ganesh utsav had meant to me during different points in my longer than five-decade stay in Mumbai. The first time I became consciously aware of the state festival in my childhood days was when my second standard class teacher by name Valli narrated to us children about the elephant-headed God. Dwelling on how Mumbaikars observe the festival she was the one who made me aware that Ganesh idols go for immersion on the third day or fifth day or seventh day or latest on the tenth day after they get installed.
While still in primary school, in Matunga, the popular don of Mumbai, Vardaraja Mudaliyar’s Ganesha idol was the main attraction for us kids. For, in those days, with no major source of entertainment from media channels, the Ganesh utsav festival in Mumbai used to be keenly awaited for watching Bollywood movies, squatting on the road. Don Vardarajan Mudaliyar’s Ganpati used to be popularly called “market pillayar” by us Tamilians. For one, the Ganesha idol was close to the Matunga market and secondly Pillayar in Tamil means Lord Ganesha.
Among a host of movies I happened to watch at the venue, I recall a Feroz Khan starrer, Khotey Sikkey which was full of fights and stunts, Shatrugun Sinha’s Rampur ka Laxman, Amitabh Bachchan-Vinod Khanna starrer, Hera Pheri, and Amitabh starrer Deewar. For me, it was not just about watching movies. It was also about getting to hear popular Bollywood chartbusters that blared from the loudspeakers at various Ganesh pandals in our locality. Finally, it was the day of bidding adieu to the Lord of knowledge where a stream of Ganesh idols used to pass through Matunga’s Ambedkar road for immersion in Dadar’s Shivaji Park sea-stretch.
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The most looked forward part in the immersion festival was dancing to the tune of the Ganpati beats. I distinctly remember dancing for our neighbouring “Paanch Building” Ganpati when I was in the early years of my secondary schooling. I can recall this because of the severe spanking I received for reaching home past 1 a.m. without any means of intimation about my whereabouts. I had gone dancing to the beats right from near my Matunga home till I entered the knee deep waters of Shivaji Park beach. Subsequently, I was able to munch a vada pav on the way back.
Post that adventure, every year, on immersion day, I used to stand with a host of Ganesha devotees on the divider of our mainroad to watch the various Ganesha idols passing by. We kids used to wait to spot Raj Kapoor’s Ganpathi that commenced from Chembur, coming all the way to our Matunga stretch before terminating its journey at Shivaji Park. As the carts and trucks carrying Ganesha idols used to go past, a continual stream of dance processions used to accompany them. From time to time, people seated in trucks used to hand over prasads to us.
Talking of prasad, we kids used to wait on the fifth day immersion at the divider to get a generous amount of sweets from the GSB Ganpati that passed through our stretch. Decades have passed and many things have changed. As a working journalist I was required to cover the immersion day and report on any incidents of violence or street sparring. Much later, we journalists were given a holiday on the final Ganesh immersion evening. Through thick and thin our trysts with Ganesha our favourite God on the streets of Mumbai was always an occasion looked forward to.
