Saturday, September 25th, 2004
Appointments with the lord
Mumbai isn’t all work and no pray.
Along with a diary for work and social engagements, most Mumbaizens have a diary for religious and spiritual occasions. The city works around the first half of the clock, rocks around the second half of the clock and manages, by working the phones, to beat the clock even in choked traffic.
But the metropolis that doesn’t find time to catch its breath, does, miraculously, find the time to pray. As people drive past the sacred stretch of sea that runs between the Haji Ali and Mahalaxmi shrines, they bow their heads and shut their eyes and a prayer plays on their lips.
Not everyone does a drive-through prayer. There are the faithfuls who keep weekly appointments with the lord. Mondays at Babulnath, Tuesdays at Siddhivinayak, Wednesday at St Michael’s Church. Some walk to the place of worship, others fast on the day of prayer, still others make offerings in the form of flowers, coconuts, candles, incense, shawls.
And, in the true spirit of Mumbai, even prayer has spawned its own industry. I don’t refer to the collections in the shrines. (At places like Siddhivinayak, that figure runs into millions of dollars and there are at least two banks that facilitate donations to the temple via ATM.)
I refer to the cottage industry spanning countless flower girls, incense and candle sellers, coconut vendors, keepers of footwear. At times, I wonder if they are the same set of people who travel from shrine to shrine on different days of the week. The very act of a city in prayer seems to generate employment for countless families. God has so many ways of looking after his flock.
The celebrations, and commerce, scale new peaks in September as the Bandra Fair and the Ganpati festival converge upon Mumbai.
Come 8th September or the Sunday thereafter and rows and rows of stalls mushroom all over the Bandra roads leading from Mount Carmel to Mount Mary. Residents of the area are issued car passes and all other vehicles are barred in order to enable the smooth passage of pilgrims.
The logistics of pilgrim management are multiplied several times over when the Ganpati festival rolls in. All of Mumbai turns into the grand trunk road as the elephant god descends into a million homes and on every street. Far from resulting in traffic blockage, the twin fests seem to energise the state machinery to perform at its most efficient.
Like the tide, the holy weeks they roll in and like the tide, they depart, stalls and mandaps and all. It is perhaps fitting that the celebrations end with the immersion of idols along Mumbai’s waterfronts.
A gentle rain usually accompanies the proceedings and Mumbai emerges cleansed every September in more ways than one.