2 posts tagged “mumbai”
Throughout the week-long Ganpati (Ganesh) Festival in Mumbai, neighborhoods display Ganesh idols in temporary temples built on the street -- some of these plaster of paris Ganeshes can reach ten feet tall. On the final day of the festival, families and big groups carry their Ganesh idols to the ocean and immerse them in the water. I think the tradition comes from when the idols were made from clay -- by returning them to their original element, one ensures that next year Ganesh will return (don't quote me though).
Anyway, on the last day of the festival, the whole city basically shuts down and massive crowds march through the streets with their Ganeshes to immerse them in the ocean. It's quite a spectacle -- especially on Chowpatty Beach, where we were.
We had a great trip going with some friends to see the action, and were lucky enough to know someone who had wrangled a boat to go out and see the immersions up close. Kudos to him, since by all accounts this is simply not done. It's not illegal, but there are just no boats to rent anywhere and if you asked you'd be turned down. Increasingly, we find that the art of living in Mumbai is knowing when and how to circumvent these sometimes baffling limitations that everyone, foreigner and local alike, finds in their way.
See the rest of our pictures on Flickr.
In the state of Maharashtra, revelers celebrate the birth of Krishna by building incredibly tall human towers in hopes of reaching a clay pot (the handi) filled with money and offerings, which is strung from a line several stories above the ground. Meanwhile onlookers distract them by throwing water balloons at them. I am not making this up...
It was a lot of fun to watch -- Dahi-handi teams go from neighborhood to neighborhood competing for cash of up to Rs. 1 lakh (~$2500) in reward for reaching the handi. After the handi is reached and the dahi-handi team comes down, the Bollywood music gets cranked up and everybody goes crazy dancing in the street until the next team is ready to go. Apparently this is pretty specific to Maharashtra -- in other parts of India the celebration is much more sober.
See all our Dahi-Handi photos on Flickr.
