Flower Bazaar at Mumbai during Ganesh Festival

Bazaar is one of the Indian traditions that come from India’s agrarian society in more than six lakhs (600,000) villages. Bazaar appears in many forms all over India. Weekly bazaar is most common. These are held at market places or at grounds used by convention within groups of villages, or at nearby towns.

There are bazaars of domestic animals – cows, bullocks, buffalos, goats, sheep, camels... besides agricultural – vegetable – forest products, products of household and agricultural uses. At Tarnetar Fair, once in year, in the desert of Rajasthan. There are camels along with other animals, and goods.

Dancing Ganesh
“Ganesh”, Lingaraj Temple (c. 1000), Bhuvaneshwar, Orissa:
Graphic by Remigius de Souza, Pencil on paper (7.00” x 10.00”)
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Mumbai, like any other city, is not only a parasite on the regions far and near, but also lives a life of hydroponics. The flower bazaar at Dadar is a visible example. Here flowers, leaves, grasses... and sticks of Babul tree are sold, which is used for cleaning teeth.

The flower bazaar at Dadar, in the island city, has been there for decades, or perhaps for ten to fifteen decades, and is a landmark. No one knows, perhaps not even the planners of the city since its foundation. Otherwise the flower bazaar in Dadar would have received a dignified place of heritage.

Flower Bazaar at Mumbai during Ganesh Festival
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During the Ganesh festival, people from surrounding villages and forests bring fruits, wild flowers, leaves, grasses of great variety. With increasing population and devotees, more and more supply comes here during the festival; so also more Ganesh idols.

Few years back a flyover has been built on this road – Senapati Bapat Marg (formerly known as Tulasi Pipe Road) – and officially a new flower market is built half a kilometre away towards its south. However the people – the original shopkeepers and the vendors who come daily continue to occupy vacant areas along the roads and under the flyover. Because of the flyover, now during the festival the vendors settle and spread along the nearby roads and lanes.

The modern town planners groomed and trained by western education failed to plan city for the people; they plan for the standards devised by the West, even though hundreds of Indian cities have been existing for more than thousand years. The education system of teaching modern town planning has so far failed to investigate inherent principles of the existing Indian cities and towns.

The modern town planners groomed and trained by western education failed to plan city for the people; they plan for the standards devised by the West, even though hundreds of Indian cities have been existing for more than thousand years. The education system of teaching modern town planning has so far failed to investigate inherent principles of the existing Indian cities and towns.

During the last decade or so, some changes are taking place. Now the market brings exotic flowers such a as orchids to this bazaar during the festivals as well as synthetic (plastic) flowers.

These images were taken by me about ten years ago, before the flyover was built.

Read more on Ganesh and the flower bazaar:
1. My “Shri Ganesh”
2. Dancing Ganesh
3. Flowers forever

Anand Coomaraswamy in his book “YAKSAS: Essays in the Water Cosmology” has written very illuminating chapter on “Mahayaksa” Ganesh. For my review of this book, see LINK


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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

FLOWERS FOREVER

My pathway along the flower bazaar
is hiding its face in utter shame
under the carpet of discarded
faded yesterday’s flowers rising
a stinking aroma as the sun rises up.
They have no salvation and no way
of reaching ever the mother earth
to sustain life eternal, the destiny
denied by the high profile culture
in this flourishing metropolis.


Dirty soil is buried under the tar
layer – no way for a drop of water
to reach thirsty streams below –
as the sun comes up oozes vapour
in the golden city ruled by high culture.
Beside the flower-bazaar lays flesh-bazaar
flourishing spreading its infectious cult
on the high ways and in by-lanes
to other bazaars of hedonic tastes.
A plucked flower here is eye’s pleasure.


Flowers and flesh are graded and priced
from expensive orchid to cheap minor ones
according to affordability in fairness.
Calling the call-girls as sex workers
to honour the labour, the socially awakened
class absolves itself of cultural taboos
and makes way for them to the altar
of progressive newfangled civilisation.
Flowers are offered here to the idols –
the gods or leaders – among the moderns.


The orthodox tribes offer in worship
flowers with grasses ? gains ? leaves ? fruits;
their women who adorn vermilion and
the maidens aspiring for marriage wear
flowers on the heads, celebrate fertility.
Flower is sex, sexual communion in nature
love and romance, fertility and abundance
for all living beings, a healer,
a selfless sacrifice in unison in nature.



27/11/2002
(Flower Bazaar at Dadar, Mumbai is a landmark place. Though officially it is shifted to a new place about half a kilometre away, the place is still being used as a flower bazaar by hundreds of vendors who make their living sustainable. Read more in a following post.)

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Kolis of Mumbai at “THE LAND’S END”

Worship of Boat by Koli Family

It is Narali Punam festival day today.

Kolis – fisher folks – worship their boats on Coconut Day, which falls on August 5, 2009, send their boats to sea, and start fishing.

Sending the boats to sea

During the monsoon, the Kolis are busy mending their nets, making new ones, repairing and painting their country crafts. They moor their boats on sandy shores, covered with leaves of coconut palms, and cultivate vegetables on monsoon rains.

They are one of the original residents of the islands of Mumbai.

The Land's End

The British, and the following governments, bulldozed the pristine creeks, hills, and the sea, with increasing pressures of development economics.

These pressures pushed the Koli communities Mumbai, also, to “THE LAND’S END”

Island City of Mumbai

As if economics and development (of building walls) matter most to the planners and policymakers, instead of life of the People.
Decades after decades in the revised development plans of Mumbai, the Koli Community and their vocation of fishing and boating did not find appropriate colours on
the Mumbai's land-use-plan!
There are millions of Kolis - fisher folks across the country along seashores, riverbanks, lake and resrvoirs: None of them the reach Olympics Events.

Is it because the planners know not any water-use-plan?
Is it as if Kolis live on no-man’s land?

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.