One thing that i love the most about my country is that wherever u go, u will always get to celebrate so many occations across the year. Its the same with Mumbai. The festival time kicked off with Id celebrations on 9th Sept across Mumbai with great fervour closely followed by Ganesh utsav the very next day. The tempo soon build up and has been un-relenting since then.
Having been in Delhi for most part of my life, i am bound to compare the 2 cities. Ganesh utsav is more comparable to Diwali in Delhi except that Mumbai is densier that Delhi and thus the festival is more 'closer' to you. So you have all the 'main roads' too lined up with hoardings, welcomes and my fav item 'lights'. the sight of entire steets converted into a shamiyana is most peacefull. Add to it the uncountable Ganesh pandals visible in every nook and corner of the city. i took the opportunity to visit a few nearby pandals one day and it was such a satisfactory experience. The prayers are all loud, the bands are near you and u r in the middle of it always.
One specific thing is worth mentioning here. Communities are so close in Mumbai - i live surrounded by majority of muslim population, nevertheless right from Ganesh festival to chritsmas to id every festival is celebrated with same gusto. more so, the Ganesh pandal is erected right next to the church where chritmas mass is conducted and right opposite to the mosque where people offer namaz and celebrate id!!!
Offcourse, with the good things of the festivity comes the real practical issues of bad traffic jams, crowd etc etc and sometimes it gets real uncomfortable. However, i found police arrangement with the traffic much better than expected but one needs to take precautions and cause minimal inconvinience to the day to day life.
Its not all, the festival season is all but over and i am really looking forward to all the happenings with great enthusiam in the coming weeks :)
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