Ganpati Bappa Morya!!

Yes, I am back - in blogland and more importantly in beloved Bombay!! Landed yesterday afternoon, on the day of Ganesh Visarjan. It was surprisingly a very cloudy day and apparently had been raining since the previous night. Took an auto and in no time reached the outskirts of borivli - the entire journey uptil tat time took abt 20 odd mins; a journey which even at 1130 pm on Friday night takes 35-40 mins, such is the magnitude and importance of this ocassion!! On the way, saw the first of the Ganesh processions and got goosebumps on my hands - I was, afterall back in Bombay for the visarjan after a gap of 5 years!! The band playing, the weird ranti dance of the people and above all the idol of Ganpati bappa in the truck - simply awesome!!

On the way saw a few more processions and the last one was where a really huge idol was being carried in a truck and the truck had stopped on a flyover slope - I could not figure out how they had managed to stop the idol from rolling down! And the best part was the folks ahead were dancing (or shud it be playing/doing??) to the lezim tune!

In the evening headed towards the local Siddhivinayak temple and boy was it a nightmare! No space for the auto to move, random people becoming traffic constables and diverting traffic and soon all hope of reaching the temple was lost...we decided to return home but the auto guy got lost and we ended up bang in front of the temple!! There I witnessed (surprisingly for the first time ever) the idols being immeresed in the pond.

With respects paid to Mumbai's beloved deity, it was time to return home...while walkin and searching for an auto I got a taste of the changing times....instead of the usual drums/bands playing music, there were huge speakers on tractors/tempos blasting bhangra/pop/remmixes and people dancing like they do in discs!! And the piece de' resistance was one particular procession blasting out - hold ur breath -
Hips Don't Lie by Shakira!!!!!!! I wasn't sure if I should laugh at this or feel sad!

Anyways, the festive season has started in India and Navaratri is next up...in the meantime I shall enjoy my stay in Bombay before I return to the dull n boring work life...

Ganpati Bappa Morya, Pudchya Varshi Lavkar yaa!!

-uv.

p.s. wud recommend the daku times as well...most of the stuff is related to my frndz and our activities at da workplace, but is still worth a read :-)