Dussera

Dussera celebrates victory over the devil and draws from Rama's defeat of the 10 headed demon king Ravana and the Goddess Durga's victory over the demon Mahishasur.



Our little friends
Dusserra seems to have become much more significant in Mumbai this year.  In our first year in India we visited Udaipur over Dusserra and the festival was much more significant with temporary temples erected and kids out dancing the kolattam or stick dance almost every night.  After returning to Mumbai from Udaipur we rarely saw any festivities on the streets


This year there were any number of Rama and Durga statutes in roadside shrines in the same manner as during Ganpatti.  On the roads with less traffic you could see people dancing, gambling and socialising for the week of Dusserra.








Bright lights of festival season



My logic is that Mumbai has a large population of migrants and they bring their traditions with them. This, combined with the fact that Mumbaikers love a good festival, means that all the regional festivals are enthusiastically celebrated.












Everyone wanted to be in the photos
We visited the nearest shrine on our Vespa, which is the best way to move around Bandra when there is a festival, but were pestered by usual street kids demanding money which made the experience unpleasant.  We moved on to a shrine near Khar fishing village and were warmly welcomed with all the kids wanting to get into the photos.

Popular posts from this blog

An Ascent of Sunanda Devi (Nanda Devi East)

Image
Climbing past the gendarmes between Camp 1 on Longstaff Col and Camp 2.  I am climbing in the middle distance ANZAC Day always bring back all kinds of memories, some good and some less so. Just recently I had some old slides scanned which arrived just before ANZAC day. It was ANZAC day 22 years ago today that I received a call to get on an immediate flight to India to join a Defence cooperation exercise in India which was to involve an ascent of Nanda Devi. The mountain stands at 7816 metres is it protected by a ring of peaks of which 12 are over 6,400 metres. The first ascent was by Bill Tillman and Noel Odell who were able to enter the Nanda Devi Sanctuary via Rishi Gangi Gorge. The ridge between Nanda Devi and Sunanda Devi The peak has a colorful history which includes the attempted installation of a nuclear powered monitoring device for Chinese nuclear tests. Turned back by bad weather, the device was lost somewhere on Sunanda Devi and was nev
Read more

Three Days in Lisbon are Not Enough!

Image
Lisbon definitely falls into the shabby but chic category. There is a real sense of dynamism here which seems to be a combination of entrepreneurial spirit, to start up costs and supportive government policies It should not have come as surprise to us that three days wasn’t enough time in Lisbon.  Both Lisbon and Porto have been Monocle’s poster children for urban gentrification and progressive local government.  This was combined the features of a one of Europe’s oldest but now faded trading empires: a beautiful port with a hilly shoreline; elaborate and still solid buildings constructed with the wealth of derived from international trade routes to South America, Africa and India; and finally a mix of ethnic groups that came to call Lisbon home. Lisbon is built on seven hills above a pretty harbour and this was a great opportunity for Kate and I to train for Corsica.  The narrow streets were home to lots of
Read more

Risk Reward and Skiing in Kashmir

Image
Risk and reward can be seen as two sides of the same coin.  Normally, when you go to a downhill skiing resort, the coins that you flip are small, small risk small reward.  One of the reasons that I love Gulmarg is that you play the game with bigger coins. Paul and Sam, my brother in-law and nephew, had heard great reports about Gulmarg from Jack, Sam's brother, despite Jack coughing up blood for most of his stay.  They decided that a visit to India was in order and, as Sam is a keen skier,  Gulmarg was the priority destination. The adventure started when we boarded the aircraft in Mumbai when I was informed by a Kashmiri on the same flight that Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri native who had been convicted of supporting a terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament, had been executed earlier that morning.  Needless to say things were going to be interesting in Srinagar as this had occurred after a number of fatal military clashes on the Line of Control. On arrival at the airport at
Read more