Purely Pedestrian: Ganesh Chaturthi

Has it ever happened to you that you are out of your city during a festival and the new place does not celebrate it at all. It is as if that festival does not exist. Since we moved to Delhi we missed action on some festivals that Bombay celebrates, like Ganesh Chaturthi. Mumbai would have witnessed so many idols being transported by big and small vehicles to homes and sarvajanik pandals. Chants of "Ganpati Bappa Morya" would be heard all around to the beat of Nasik dhol. The local pandal would bring Ganpati Bappa in a truck with a groups of youngsters dancing to film music in front of the idol. We would stand in our balcony and see them going by tapping our fingers in tandem with the music. In complete contrast, we don't see any action in Delhi and the lone Sarvajanik Ganpati we know of is at the Maharashtra Sadan on Copernicus Marg.

Last year, we went to the Sarvajanik Ganesh Utsav at the Maharashtra Sadan and for the first time we saw few Marathi speaking people, together at one place in Delhi. The pandal was decorated simply and had a beautiful Ganpati Bappa, with a pujari doing the pujas. There was lunch set up on the grounds and hoping for a good Maharashtrian meal we went to the grounds only to find out it was a regular buffet Punjabi food. With our hopes dashed we went to the Canteen on the first floor and tried their thali. Nothing great to write about and yes, it could be described to a very small degree as a Maharashtrian thali. We were hoping they would have modaks, the steamed variety (ukdiche modak) but no luck on that front as well. Feeling disappointed we promised ourselves that we would try to be in Mumbai for the next year's Ganesh Chaturthi. But again this year, we are in Delhi, ruing that there is no indication of the festivities that Mumbai must be witnessing right now. So as appeasement we promised ourselves a visit to the Maharashtra Sadan for the evening aarti.

The evening aarti was at 6.45pm and it was simple with a few people, most probably employees at Maharashtra Sadan, singing the aarti songs. There were in all about 80 to 100 people gathered for the aarti. People could go and take darshan and prasad was distributed to all. There were 4 stalls in the grounds selling vada pav, puranpoli, modak, pani puri and some crafts. We were only interested in the vada pav, puranpoli and modak stalls and made a beeline and stood there even before the stall was set up. While we waited for them to get the stuff, more people had started gravitating towards the vada pav stalls. Goes to show how much the vada pav is missed by the Maharashtrians here! The minute one stall was set up we placed our order of vada pav, enough to take home for dinner and then bought some more from the other stall to eat right there. Satiated, we left from there with our booty - vada pav, fried modak, puranpoli and shengdaana chutney.