Anyone for Prasad?

If you’re wanting to give blood, or get your hearing tested in Mumbai, now’s the time. I don’t quite understand the link, myself, but the ten-day Ganesh Birthday Bash has community medicine among its many more openly festive traditions. Imagine celebrating Christmas by having your blood pressure checked (not a bad idea, now I come to think of it....), or popping into the clinic to get your personal plumbing MOT’d, before buying your Easter eggs . The roads here are strewn with mobile health units, which Monu has added seamlessly to his All-Mumbai Tour: “Madame, you know clinic?” He takes one hand off the wheel, to direct our attention to the right. “This eye clinic.” Sure enough, there’s the camper-van, with the hand-cranked ophthalmoscope and the reading-charts. They’re probably all in Hindi script, anyway, so I wouldn’t even be able to read the top line. It occurs to me, that I can’t read the top line in English, even when it’s always a “Y” - thus myopia gives me racial inclusion.

Day 10, and the community-Ganeshes are taken for a final triumphant procession, before the aquatic farewell. For the past week and a half, families have been taking their small domestic Ganpati to immerse in the lake – I say “small” – some of them are bigger than the oldest child in the family – but, for the grand finale, the municipal Ganeshes, from the local pandals, take centre stage. Day 11’s the send-off. Except, it’s pouring down.

In England, we do wellies and umbrellas; at a push, waders and sou’westers. Here, rain-evaision is an art-form, requiring much ingenuity and no expense. There’s the ever-popular chef’s hat carrier-bag on the head, which you would clip a four-year-old for trying. There’s the casual newspaper draped from ear to ear – Look, Mum! No hands! - Not for blondes, this one, unless you want yesterday’s headlines inked into your barnet for a week or so... A much-favoured resort is the ubiquitous orange cloth. As soon as you stop at traffic lights, someone appears at your window, flogging a pile of what look like tea-towels. For some reason, the orange ones are always on top. “Is cloth for car,” says Monu. Is also cloth for rainhat, as far as I can see. I ask, what they cost. “This man say, ten and fifteen rupee, and you say six and eight rupee, and he say, ok.” THAT’s how you barter. Well, you may do, not me. I just go, “Fifteen rupees, ok, here you are,” thereby ruining the whole system. They like taking your money, but they’re aggrieved at the lack of harangue, which is all part of the process. I’m not built for the east.

My far-and-away winner, in the rainwear category, is the bloke nipping in front of the simmering lanes of traffic, just as the lights turn green. Wearing a dhoti (like Gandhi) and a polyester shirt (not like Gandhi), he steps barefoot across the puddled tarmac, holding a banana-leaf over his head for an umbrella. I’m too busy applauding, to get the camera out. Sorry.

Armed with an umbrella a-piece, we stroll down to the lake, where all-Powai and his wife - and the kids, and grandma, supported by a string of nephews and neighbours - are singing Ganesh home. The air’s heady with incense, and the drums call to each other, from truck to truck. Everyone appears to be wearing orange, although there’s so much colour powder in the air, they may well have set out in white. The jasmine-and-rose-flavoured Tide’s going to have all on, getting this little lot clean, tomorrow. As we turn off the road onto the track leading to the water’s edge, a man dips his forefinger into his bag of powdered dye, and paints a red stripe on our foreheads, wishing us a happy Ganesh Chathurti. We feel very welcome and participative, if a little conspicuous with our pasty faces.

Ganeshes are arriving in tuk-tuks, in the family car, on the heads of believers, in horsedrawn Cinderella-carriages, strung with fairy-lights. Communities hire lorries to carry Ganesh – and themselves – to the waterside. We see statues as small as tea-cups, and others as large as grown elephants. Everywhere, lit trays of incense and spices. A man beckons, and shows us what to do: you take a pinch of spice, scatter it over the statue, pass your hand through the flame, and then over your face and hair. Excellent, have a piece of Prasad.

Tonight, even though four policemen are sitting on plastic chairs, having a bit of a picnic, there’s some evidence of crowd control. A rope cordons off one side of the thoroughfare, to separate arrivals and departures along the spit, and speed up the throughput. At home, there’d be a row of temporary posts in the ground, to hold the rope, but here the job’s done by a team of ladies in black and white saris, with yellow basketball caps. Unlike the policemen lining the route of royal processions, in England, who have to face the crowds and miss the fun, these ladies have prime viewing spots, for the parade of Ganeshes, making their final journey to the water. Parties start arriving as soon as it goes dark, at about seven, then there's an unbroken flow of celebrants, until the small hours. It’s a long night, for the rope-gang.

Another length of womanned rope holds back the crowds from the very edge of the lake. Only the families, whose Ganeshes are finally reaching the water, are allowed into the final pen. Before we reach the rope, we’re ushered in, even though we’re clearly Ganesh-less. Positive racism, I think.

This time, instead of the queue of swimmers, the boys in the orange t-shirts are crewing two rafts. The land-crew collect the Ganesh from the family, and carry it to the raft. Some need two porters, others, four. A huge Ganesh arrives, and no fewer than ten men shuffle it across the landing stage. We wonder whether the raft will capsize, but it doesn’t.

The raft is poled out a few yards offshore, and the statues are slipped into the water, one by one. The smaller ones are dunked in and out, one, two, three, by the kneeling porter, before being dropped into the lake. The boys lift a large Ganesh over the side of the raft, and he slips from their grasp, and plunges underwater, without ceremony, irrecuperably. The watching family are clearly disconcerted, and stop their chanting mid-morya. When the next hefty statue's shuffled overboard, two boys slide into the water to receive him, so that due dunking can be observed.

We duck under the cordon, to head for home. It takes us a while, to find the road again, because we have to stop to shake hands or say “Namaste!” every two paces. When we reach the shadow of our building, the heavens open, so we do need our umbrellas, after all.

At the lakeside, the festivities are clearly undampened. From our window, we can’t smell the incense, but the pipes and drums and firecrackers will be keeping sleep at bay, yet a while. Tomorrow, it’ll be business as usual, but for tonight, there’s still time for another round of Ganpati Bappa – Morya!

Songs of Praise

In the middle of the road through Parkside, the no-lakh housing estate, cheek-by-jowl with leafy Powai, the newspaper vendor has his pitch. He sits on the crumbling wall, separating the two carriageways, with tuk-tuks zooming or not-zooming by his ears, and sells his papers through car-windows as they stop and start by, or to pedestrians prepared to zig-zag across impatient morning traffic. He’s one of the landmarks I use, to pin down the unstable geography, which is Mumbai, in my head. He’s also my barometer. On a sunny day, he fans his papers out, along the wall in front of him, for ease of choosing. On an uncertain day, they’re stacked, between his knees, under a plastic sheet, and you have to know what you’re asking for; no mooching. Today, he’s not even there. Serious sou’wester weather ahead, then.

As we leave Powai, there’s a man taking his dog for a walk, in the rain. A honey Labrador, wearing a blue raincoat. A minute down the road, in Parkside, I see a child dressed in a supermarket carrier-bag, holding the hand of an even tinier boy, wearing nothing but a piece of string, for a loincloth. All of life rolls by our window.

At school, we can’t concentrate, because of Ganesh. Not that religious fervour has elbowed fractions and dictation out of everyone’s mind, it’s the music. In the courtyard, framed by the four tenement blocks, a pandal has been erected, amid all the flotsam and jetsam of slum life. It looks like a builders’ shack, from the outside, but it’s cloaked in tasselled orange glory, within. Every waking moment, piped music fills the air and all our senses, at such a volume as would shatter the window-panes, except we haven’t got any, here in Mankhurd. Bhavika-didi cranks her personal volume up 'til her throat’s on fire, and presses on with tenses.

“Yesterday I was sad,” thumb jerk to the left, crying face. "Today I am happy!” Forefingers down to the ground, big smiles. “Do you follow, yes or no?”

“Didi, and tomorrow?” says Swapnil, clearly aware of the transitory nature of happiness, a child after my own heart.

“Tomorrow, no, Swapnil!” Didi barks, “Tomorrow comes after. We’re thinking about today!”

Rani-didi – Woman of Many Parts, Distributor of Worksheets and Custodian of the Erasers – closes the door, and pulls the skimpy curtains across the metal bars of the window – they don’t reach, at either side. We can either hear, or breathe, but not both, it seems. When the electricity cuts out, the room plunges into murkiness, and the fan slithers to a halt. The heat washes in instantly, and Rani-didi cracks the door open again. Ganesh’s glee chorus has stopped – power-cuts aren’t all bad news – and silence fills the courtyard, for an interval. We work in the gloom for a bit, peering at smudgy pencil on rough paper, then the light comes on – fiat lux! – and the fan whirrs into action. Before we have time to blink and refocus, the air’s throbbing with joyful music, again.

Think of Songs of Praise. Now think of everything that isn’t Songs of Praise - mewling women, pulsing drums, and a thousand decibels – and you have Hymns to Ganesh. I don’t know how Indian music is annotated; they’re very hot on syncopation, yet seem to sing everything glissando, if that’s not a musical paradox. Whatever the theory, it’s all very catchy. I hum along happily, in the car, for miles (well, hours), playing “Name That Tune” with Monu. Joss Stone and Jack Johnson, and everyone else who lives in our CD drawer, in Rempstone, are going to have to spice things up a little, when we get home.

Bhavika-didi writes “YWBAT” on the board, corralled tidily off to one side. I watch her do this maybe twenty times, before I associate it with what she’s saying as she writes – “You Will Be Able To...” Even in a classroom with no chairs, no desks, no glass in the windows, we still have to have Aims and Objectives. Today, YWBAT understand co-operation. That’s a tall order, for most undergraduates I know, but here’s a floorful of seven-year-olds desperate to tackle it, in a foreign language. Co-operation is working together, didi says.

“What is co-operation?”

“Working together!”

Yesterday, we did responsibility, which most of us understand better than we can pronounce. It’s not just about spelling and sums, in Akanksha, you know.

Bhavika-didi’s telling the story of Aju, a big fish with scary teeth, who bites a hole in the fisherman’s net, to save all the little fishes caught inside, proving that even people, who don’t seem kind, can be caring. I’m supposed to be testing Ashish on his sight words, mother, father, cupboard, same, different.... but clearly Aju’s adventures are far more exciting – for Ashish and me both – so I ask the Boss if we can go and sit on the terrace, to read. She smiles at me, the way you smile at people of impaired understanding, and says no. Apparently the modus operandi for local housewives is to dispose of anything unwanted straight out of the window. Dirty water, paper scraps, yesterday’s leftover dal, vegetable peelings, and worse. And even worse. So, sitting on the terrace outside, for a spot of paired reading, in peace, is not an option.

Back at the apartment, and the clouds are gathering with intent, so the newsagent-barometer did well to stack his Hindustani Times. I can hear the rain, but I can’t see it, looking straight out of the window at the leaden sky. The end of the street, where you turn left for the Great Punjab, or right for D-Mart, is thinly visible, but this is more folk-memory, than sight. Beyond that, it could be the nearside of Powai Lake, it could be a cloud-bank. The other side of the Lake might as well be Kathmandu, for all I can tell.

Down below, the green-grocer’s stall is cloaked in blue plastic, but there are no takers, this afternoon. The stall-holder sits, cross-legged, with his empty balance and weights, behind his pyramids of custard-apples and papaya, waiting for the rain to exhaust itself, and his customers to come out again. I hope he’s got a crossword, then, because the heavens are rocking and rolling. It’ll be a while before anyone’s in the market for snake gourds.

Ganpati Bappa Morya!

Powai Lake’s lit like a Christmas tree. The approach road’s jammed, strings of headlights tailing off into the distance. Fireworks pepper the sky, and the night pulses with the beat of drums. Ganesh is going home.

One and a half days after Hindus welcome the figure of Ganesh into their homes, with special prayers and rituals, he’s carried out to be sent on his way again, by being symbolically immersed in a body of water. The enormous public Ganeshes, in communal pandals, remain in place until the end of Sarvajanik, after the full ten days’ celebrating. So, tonight is family night.

The family go to the idol-maker, to collect their Ganesh, and pay him in cash, wrapped in a mango leaf. The journey home’s precarious, because if the idol’s mishandled, and chipped or damaged in any way, the celebrations are over for the family, for that year. It’s with considerable relief, all round, then, that Ganesh is safely installed in the home, duly anointed with kumkum and presented with the traditional brass tray of fruit and vegetables, the PhalavaLi.

From our apartment, we walk round the block, into the centre of Powai, where it’s business as usual. People are shopping at D-Mart and Crossword, Papa John’s Pizza restaurant’s full, the paan-seller’s got his circle of punters, like every other night. It’s hard to find a pandal. “Rich people, no interested in Ganesh festival,” says Monu flatly. By the lake, where the labourers live in the no-lakh housing estate, there’s a pandal every hundred yards, so there seems some justification in Monu’s dismissive categorizing.

We leave the shops and restaurants, and walk down to the lakeside, following the sound of drums and singing. By the edge of the water, it’s like a funfair. Tuk-tuks pull up at the kerbside, and whole families spill out, in all their sequinned finery. Further along, in the lamplight, peering through a windscreen, we make out Ganesh sitting on Grandpa’s knee, in the passenger seat of the family car, Dad driving, and Mum, Grandma and the kids crammed in the back seat. The air’s electric with excitement and incense.

We’re a bit diffident about intruding – we’re not going anywhere unnoticed, not only do we have radio-actively pale faces, but we’re just about the only people not wearing orange – so we teeter diffidently at the entrance. Within a heartbeat, we’re hailed like long-lost relatives, with smiles and waves, and pulled inside. Within a minute, our hands are full of food.

Special dishes are prepared for this evening, and carried with the idol to the water’s edge, where final ceremonies are performed. Once food which has been offered to the deity, it’s considered to contain his blessing, and is distributed to share that blessing. Prasad. I have in my cupped hand sweets like tiny asteroids, shredded coconut, rice, shards of jaggery. Mr Roland, more conservative, accepts a green lemon.

Definitely spectators here, we’re longing to take photographs, but politeness stays our hands. After the fourth family take our photos, though – with or without the baby – we decide this can be a reciprocal arrangement, and Lord Lichfield gets the camera out.

Lining up by the water, a row of men - smooth-cheeked youths and grizzled elders alike - wearing orange or yellow t-shirts and loincloths. They stand, fidgeting on the uneven shingle in their bare feet, their chapals abandoned on the rocks. A family approaches, singing and chanting. “Ganpati Bappa...” shouts the man of the house. “Morya!” his family respond. “Mangal Moorti...” he calls. “Morya!” they finish. O Father Ganesh, come early again next year. It’s quite catching.

The Ganesh is handed over, on his plinth, to two of the bearers in the queue. Between them, they carry him to the lake, and one of them swims out, backwards, with the bobbing idol, so the family, on the shore, can watch their Ganesh enter the water. When the swimmer’s out of his depth, he lifts up the Ganesh, then plunges him underwater, then again, then again. When he immerges the idol for the last time, he puts a foot on him, to keep him submerged, until the lake seeps into the plaster. Ganesh, water-logged, is gone for good, thus safely on his way home to Kailash. The swimmer does a fast crawl back to shore, where he recovers the plinth, and deposits a symbolic nugget of river mud in its centre, before returning it to the family, who bear it off triumphantly.

The swimmers are paid, individually, by the family whose Ganesh they carry. They wait in patient line, but if a family tarries too long, chanting and waving and video-ing the departure of their Ganesh, the queue of porters gets restive, and encourages them to move on with unmistakable hand gestures and equally unequivocal unholy words.

We stand and watch, as family after family arrive, for the send-off. There’s no organised order of play, as far as we can determine, but the crowds seem to flow into order accidentally, like the Mumbai traffic at a crossroads.

An objective onlooker can’t help but see an element of competition, here, as neighbouring families strive to out-Ganesh one another, keeping up with the Kumars. It’s not a phenomenon exclusive to India, think of the flashing reindeer and inflatable snowmen which proliferate on English lawns in December. Not on the street where I live, obviously. Nor you.

On the way out again, we pass waves of new arrivals, and collect smiles and handshakes, as well as a palmful of fruit salad. Mr Roland declines, but I munch my way through chunks of apple and unpeeled lime, dotted with bright pippins of pomegranate. I have a furtive ball of modak, steamed rice dumpling, screwed into a tissue in my handbag, because I can’t swallow it, but I’m up for chopped fruit, any day.

At the entrance, there’s a right song and dance. A Ganesh has arrived, in a lorry, framed by fronds of palm, accompanied by a band of drummers and musicians, and an entire dynasty doing jigs and reels in its wake. Their painted statue is too beautiful – and surely too costly – to dissolve in the lake, but the belief is that Ganesh takes all your worries with him, so his loss is ultimately your gain. And there’s always next year, to look forward to.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggedy-jig

We’re in the car, on the way to the airport, and no-one’s saying anything. At the lights, Monu furtively hands me a parcel, “Madame, is your gift.” Instead of wrenching it open with my teeth, as usual, I thank him, and politely ignore it. I’m learning Indian etiquette. (When I give Monu a framed picture of himself, for his Mum, he just says, “Oh!” in a slightly disappointed way, and stashes it out of sight. He does like it, though, I ask him two days later – “Very nice. I and my car.”) I look the other way, while the parcel sits on my knee, a small glittering tea-chest with its large plastic rose. Practical says, let Roland repatriate it to the apartment. Sentimental says, lug it with. No contest. So, I now have a suitcase the size of Portugal but a little heavier, a laptop in a bag crammed with toiletries as well, in case Jet Airways don’t give free toothbrushes to peasants in Economy, a coat for the hostile Northern climes, and my Monu-mental gift. I wonder when I’m going to get the cabbage and the Crackerjack pencil.
“I very sad. Come back early,” Monu says. I suppose he means “soon” but I’m not in the mood to quibble about adverbs. I can’t give him a hug, because it’s Not Done, so I pat his hand meaningfully, and totter off behind Mr Roland. Before I reach the pavement, I’m already staggering, and I’m only carrying my passport. It’s going to be a long night.
In the airport lounge, everybody looks like they should have been in bed hours ago. It’s two in the morning, why wouldn’t they? In the absence of a bed, some sleep right there on the carpet, pillowed on all their worldly goods. I open my present. It’s Ganesh, Lord of Success and Destroyer of Evils and Obstacles. Perfect.
Then I don’t speak for fourteen hours, other than to say “Yes, please!” or “No, thank-you!” approximately four times each. (All good journeys should offer a new experience, and this is mine.) The air-stewardesses all look like Miss India, a cunning plot by the airline to make you feel even more dishevelled and travel-stained, in yesterday’s clothes. My eleventh-hour upgrade at check-in means I get another pair of Jet Airways pyjamas, to add to my collection. I’d quite like to add my breakfast china, too, but my pilfering hand is stayed by the lack of space in my hand luggage (see above). Am already going to be hard-pressed, squidging in my lovely new pyjamas and washbag.
We travel 36,000 feet in the air, at a speed of over 400 miles an hour. It’s my profound belief that flying’s against nature, so I watch the statistics bob about on the screen, in mesmerised horror. It’s minus 36 degrees outside (outside the plane, not just outside the comfort of Business Class). If you fell out, I wonder, would you die of cold, or lack of oxygen, at this altitude? I feel certain that Roland would know the answer to this, but where is he when I need him?
Every time a light doze threatens to establish itself, Captain Steve comes on the air, telling us to put our safety belts on, because we’re going through some tricky weather. Not much of a lullaby.

Ten hours later, we crunch down on English tarmac, all intact. “Good morning, and welcome to London, Heathrow,” says the Captain. “Local time is 7.45, and the temperature in London this morning is three degrees.” I look dubiously at my sandalled feet. I still have my Jet Airways slipper socks on, too. It’s not a great look, to be honest, but there’s no choice, if I’m determined to keep all ten toes. I collect my miscellany of hand-luggage, and head for the hatch.
Whoever said, it’s better to journey than to arrive, was clearly not going home.