Sunday, September 03, 2006
Khetwadi
Khetwadi was one of the crazier places I did the rounds of . Although Khetwadi itself is a rather large sort of place, this one road, an inner road where the ground floor houses printing presses and drawn carbon steel rods, has more ganeshotsav mandals than the imagination can account for. As I moved along the central road to my left and right shot off lanes called ‘khetwadi pehli galli’, ‘Khetwadi doosri galli’ and so on up to ‘Khetwadi barhvi galli’.
I started from the 12th lane, that supposedly houses the most popular ganpati, but that is all hearsay, there is nothing official about it. From there onwards every lane had an SGM and almost all housing societies in between had SGMs and some more. The staggering density of ganpati pandals was such that between lane 13 and lane 7 I had already seen 12 ganpati mandals, skipping a couple of the smaller ones. 
Because of the high density of these festivities, I can imagine that in the night when the dancing and festivities begin, the entire area of the streets of khetwadi become one very very big party. The entire area will be lit up, one song on one street fading into another song on another street. I can imagine that it would be crazy. The road along which these things happen in Girgaum is too big, the ganpatis are too far inside for all of them to meld into one large festivity, but at Khetwadi I can imagine exactly that happening.
With all this extreme closeness of the pandals there is also an intense sense of competition between the mandals. Several of them had awards displayed up front and as I went deeper into the lanes, the decorations were more and more flashy and the social messages more and more forceful.
This one pandal in between lane 10 and 9 was doing a trial run of their idea when I went there. They had chosen to theme their decoration around ‘maa’. There was a pink satin curtain in front of the idol on which strange shapes kept the viewer occupied as the voice over narrated the story. 
A spotlight highlighted images of famous ‘maas’ and contemporary situations as the narration referred to it and then at the climax of the message the curtain to rose to ask Ganpati to give us clarity and strength in fulfilling that endeavour. The other one with an elaborate narration simply kept their ganpati in the dark up until the end of the story. 
It had people whose heads moved and spoke and fluorescent lights to draw the audience to the speaking mannequins. 
They arranged for benches for the line outside and only admitted people inside at the beginning of the show. They also sold gate passes for direct entry, skipping the line completely. This was the first place I heard film music being played outside in the waiting and performance area, not inside near the idol. 
# posted by ateya @ 9:49 PM 
