Diwali joy and regrets

I had a happy Diwali. But some precious pictures are only in my mind, and I can only share them through words because I had no camera and/or no time to stop and take pictures.

1. People setting up their bedding on the street for the night on Delisle Road (N. M. Joshi Marg) under cheap strings of LED lights that decorated their shanties for Diwali.
2. Diwali lantern bazaar in Mahim, a little south of Victoria School.
3. Yesterday (Sunday, Oct 25), a police van illegally parked on the kerb outside Nanda Cottage, Church Avenue, Khar. I don't know if the police were there to investigate a local crime, or just on patrol for Chhat Pooja (hundreds of thousands of people were expected at Juhu Beach, and Church Avenue is an arterial road).

Still, here are some pictures I did take during Dassera and Diwali:

Below: Swastikas - an ancient Indic auspicious symbol that invokes good fortune - embellish a neighbor's apartment entrance at Dassera

Below: Fresh marigolds and stalks of grain mark celebration, prosperity and the harvest of the kharif (monsoon) crop

Below: Remains of religious rituals - red-and-yellow cotton thread, red fabric, coconut shells, marigolds and zinnias, and incense ash - are disposed of near the roots of a tree. The plastic bags and polyester fabric are unfortunate mutants of an environmentally friendly tradition of composting religious remnants.

Below: A giant paper Raavan towers over traffic on a busy road. Effigies of Raavan are burned on Dassera, to commemorate the victory of good (Lord Ram) over evil (Raavan).

Below: Clearly the 10-headed demon king disapproves of the way people drive in Mumbai.

Below: Dassera procession on Haines Road at Agripada. Cops were posted in areas where Hindu-Muslim tension may be a possibility, and also along visarjan routes (routes to the beaches, where idols of Durga would be immersed in the water).

Below: All the ladies were out in their colorful finery to bid the mother goddess farewell.

And Durga Maata deserves nothing less than a proper western-style drum kit mounted on wheels:

Below: Durga stands on a float, in front of her tiger and carrying her trident. She is flanked by three priest types. Traditional marigolds have been eschewed for colored gerbera daisies.

Below: Man selling LED lights in the pedestrian subway that connects Capitol Cinema and VT Station. This was a couple of days before Diwali, the festival of lights. The electricity is probably stolen or bought with a bribe.

Below: Rangoli (sand painting) at the entrance of my home for Diwali. I made it long and narrow to fit the threshold, because a bigger one would be in the way of people entering neighboring apartments. The swastika is not anti-semitic, just a wish for good fortune.

Below: The lamps are earthen, with coconut oil and cotton wicks. Some people say they are to welcome the victorious Lord Ram back to Ayodhya. Another explanation is that they welcome Lakshmi (goddess of material prosperity) into one's home. The adherents of the latter theory are generally of the business/trading communities who celebrate a new year (2066 this year) the day after Diwali. For them, Diwali is also the occasion for Lakshmi pooja (worship) , to open new account books on an auspicious note. A swastika is marked in vermilion paste on the first page. Whatever the reason for the lamps, the city looks lovely all lit up.

Below: More offerings under a tree. These must have been left by the Gujarati working-class community near my apartment, because the camel-riding devi, Dashaamaa, is not traditionally worshipped by the trading and Brahman castes as far as I know. The plastic bag is full of a mung bean-like legume called matki.

Below: This is what Diwali is really about in Mumbai - sales on electronics ;) Two men transport a flat-screen LCD TV on a motorcycle near Kamla Mills. I actually saw two other men on another motorcycle a few kilometres further south, doing the same thing. I'm still trying to figure out why someone who spent at least Rs 30,000 on the TV wouldn't pay another Rs 150 for a cab, which would be safer and more comfortable for the men and for the TV.

Monsoon night in Mumbai

Wadala road bridge, 1:30 am: The light from a street lamp falls on a few tents on the curb, in which families are sleeping. The tents are covered in blue or white plastic sheets in case it rains. Outside one of the tents, a small white cat sits quietly, its back to the cars on the road.

Photos I regret not taking

We all see beautiful or moving moments that we couldn't photograph for some reason. In my case, more often than not, it's because I was too lazy or disorganized to take my camera along. I created this new tag so I can share the images that now exist only in my head.

To start off, a really old image, and one from last night.

Sometime in April/May 1990. Beach on the Andhra coast, somewhere near the estuary of the Godavari and the town of Narasapur. Blue sky, empty beach, quite barren - just a little bit of scrub - and scores of iridescent red crabs teeming astonishingly on clean white sand. Sarojamma breaks off from our little group of women who had briefly stopped there, and, in a moment of exuberance, runs towards the crabs, sending them scurrying in all directions in a panic. Just remembering Sarojamma's impulsive joy gives me a sense of freedom.

Sunday, January 20, 2008. Mumbai Festival event in the amphitheater on the Carter Road promenade, Khar/Bandra. An Australian hip-hop band called Downsyde is playing on
the stage, egging the audience on to sing along, raise their hands in the air, and dance. During the last couple of songs, the little area near the stage is packed with dancers. Two little kids, a girl of around four, with a cloud of curls, and a younger boy appropriately sporting a wool beanie, are up on the stage with the four hip-hoppants, three of whose names I remember as Shabazz, Armee, and Dazaztah (sp?). The little girl, especially, had a great sense of rhythm, and even improvised in time to the music improvisations, hurling her little arms in the air with abandon. Joy!

Just realized as I typed the last full stop - they're both seaside moments of joy...