Ganpati Bappa Moriya

Evening, 5:30pm

I woke up suddenly... there was a lot of commotion going on downstairs.I Got out of bed lazily and looked out the window. There was this girl down there (one who I'm iinterested in) and I immidiately changed into something acceptable and went down. We talked for a while and I realised that the Ganesh idol was being taken away for visarjan. The truck hired by the society was filled up with a few people. I was contemplating if I should join them, when another of my friends came down. We decided we should go, after all it would be our first experience.

The truck was loaded with a few uncles and auntys and four of us guys. We left the building admist cheers. Down the road Mr. Yadav tried to urge us with cries of 'Ganpati Bappa..' but we were to lazy and concious to reply with a 'Moriya..!'. But the josh soon caught on, and now we were the ones giving out the cries and trying to shout the loudest. I was a nice sight to see many Mumbaikars going the same way as us... giving us cries of Ganpati Bappa Moriya without hesitation. Well, along the way, when we were trying to catch a few breaths the auntys started with the gossiping as usual.. "isne yeh nahi kiya... hum to aisa karne waale the... yahaan to koi kaam karne waala hi nahi hai...".. when it got too much for us, we started of with another string of cries... aah.... feels good when you can cut off the bakwass of the elders without getting reprimanded.
The journey wasn't too long, and we entered Borivali National Park soon, coining songs on the way. Well, it was time to get off. Shouting "ek, do, teen, char...." we got off, but realised we were barefoot. This was an experience in itself too, walking on gooey mud barefeet, somewhat a rarity in an urban city like mumbai. Finally, it was time to say goodbye to our "ganpati-ji". The cops wouldn't allow us down to the river as part of crowd control, but we pulled a senti on him, saying this is our first visarjan and so on... he finally let us down. Though I've never felt much towards religion and idol worship (though I'm a firm believer in God, a shapeless, nameless, uncharacterized God), I did feel an emotion of attachment towards this Ganpati, coming down here actually and seeing it go, and I for once felt the same as many others in Mumbai and Maharashtra do on this day.