Bandra Fair: A melting pot

I am not against change. You aren’t, I’m sure. No one is. However, you wouldn’t disagree with me that some things are best left unchanged. For more than 300 years now, the harbingers of change have not been able to rub the old charm off the face of Bandra Fair.

Past the tides and tumults for over three centuries, tens of thousands have made their way up the stairs to Basilica of Mount Mary in Bandra to celebrate the eight-day festival every September to mark the Nativity of Mother Mary. Defying time, the fair held on to its old-world charm and till date stands as an epitome of cultural and religious oneness.

Legend has it that the fair started when a statue of Mother Mary was found floating in the Arabian Sea between 1700 and 1760 by a Koli fisherman who had dreamt about it earlier. Today, you would find that the entire stretch, from Mehboob Studio to the Mount Mary hillock, wears a carnival look with festoons and buntings adorning the mount.

This annual fete, with its raw earthiness, reminds me of Bandra’s pastoral origins, that it was once a charming village by the sea. The fair goes back to simpler times in the suburb’s history when the only things taller than the church’s steeple were the swaying palm trees. Speaking of the fun, food and frolic, little has changed over the years.

This year, there are about 3,000 pitch-up stalls selling sweets like guava cheese, kadio bodio (crystallised ginger and savouries) from Goa, mewa peda from Uttar Pradesh, halwa from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Delhi and of course, Maharashtra’s favourite sweet, chikkis. As a kid and then as a teenager, I chomped on them and decades later, my daughter loves them too. Not everywhere do you find kid games like giant spinning wheels. They were and still are a part of the fair.

Call it a divine conjunction or whatever, Ganesha Chaturthi, Ramazan and the Bandra Fair run almost parallel to each other. The fair represents a melting pot, a great leveller, where barriers of class, creed, community and religion fade. I remember that only yesterday, I met one Md Abdul Hasan, and his six-year-old son, Karim at the fair, who said: “This being the Ramazan month, I often come here to break Roza after sunset. The sweets, mostly home-made, are fabulous and there is no bhed-bhav (discrimination) and people are immensely friendly. Scores of my friends visit this place all eight days, you know.”

Rev. Frank J. D’Souza, a pastor from Abu Dhabi, who comes every year especially for this fair, agreed, “The multi-community and multi-religious hues that the fair has taken on is nowhere to be found in the world.” Can you beat that in a world torn asunder by racial
and communal hatred?

And yes, this is prime time to revive camaraderie. This is one week when Bandraites play host to their family and friends living elsewhere and get an opportunity to meet up after maybe, months. It’s time to refurbish family bonds. There is so much to savour in so little time. The fair’s on till Sunday. In case you haven’t, do visit it to get transported back to the good, old times of yore.