Column

The city loves him… it’s difficult not to. After all, he’s been a part of Mumbai’s identity for decades now.

A friend, protector, someone who watches over the city and its people and their fortunes and misfortunes, listens to their prayers and overhears their dreams and hopes even before they are articulated …it is impossible to imagine Mumbai without him.

His benign presence seems to embody Mumbai, multitasking, watchful, slow to react, swift when it does….

And once a year, the city decides to make Ganesha know that He is special.

Pandals crop up at street corners, in colonies and co-op housing societies, homes make room for his idol, and the paraphernalia that accompanies bringing an idol home for consecration.

And there is for all of 10 days, a feeling of gaiety, unseen like incense, but felt , inexplicable as first love.

It is as if the air over Mumbai has changed, and could be just that bit more sacred.

Wistful thinking though.

The worship of Ganpati as a social practice has evolved and changed through the decades since its inception, and today, there is, mixed in the fervour and piety, a dash of something that seems like an adulterant.

Little wonder then, when I look at the small but watchful eyes of the many Ganeshas , or the photos of them, looking at the city from posters and banners, I think I sense a puzzlement.

What, Ganesha is thinking, am I doing here, breathing this noxious air, as traffic comes to an impatient standstill outside the pandals, blocked by the throngs waiting for a glimpse.

Why he wonders, are my ears assailed by the sound of honking horns and swear words in many languages as the melting pot called Mumbai comes to a boil at the very point where a Ganpati pandal encounters the rest of the street that it has blocked.

And who, he seems to ask, are these people whose faces surround my image and smile out of every poster, banner and announcement that hangs all along the long, endless roads that lead in and out of my city. Are they the new Gods whom Mumbaikars worship?

The loud sound of music, disco pop or whatever that is interspersed with the bhajan remixes… if he could flap his ears shut, he would. Does no one understand that an elephant has very sensitive hearing?

Then there is the ritual of sending the idol back into the unknown spaces… the ceremony of immersion is always tinged with a little regret, one gets used to the fact that a celestial guest is overseeing one’s daily life. But the genuine feeling is lost in the din of tuneless drums beaten to death by very obviously deaf boys, and the exploding crackers and the gaiety of dancers in procession.

True all this is a part of the culture of the city, and captured in countless films, but is it fit treatment to a God?

Think again, of Ganesha, symbolised by the elephant, a strictly vegetarian animal, whose idols, painted in toxic paints kill countless fish as they sink slowly to the sea bed to be washed away into the deeper waters.

Think too of the flotsam and jetsam, of the half immersed idols left as debris as the city goes back to normal life, forgetting the God and all he stands for.

Think too, of the fundamentalist undercurrent that has multiplied the idol phenomenon to include Krishna, Durga and Lakshmi, and even the occasional Valmiki and Shiva, and imagine the state of the seas, the polluting of air, the endless burning of fairy lights that never get switched off even at night , in a country facing power shortage, and feel dismay if you believe that even a city like Mumbai needs its quiet moments for some introspection.

Prayer and celebration, whatever the religion, should not impinge on the private space of others; it should not be a political statement, it cannot destroy what is everyone’s right to enjoy.

Maybe next year, someone will make the many bhaktas of Ganesha,and every other God, regardless of the religion represented, understand these subtle needs.

Email: ssaran@dnaindia.net