Bombaychya Raja: Does anyone remember?

 

The festival wasn’t always ‘sarvajanin’ or public. And though its history can be traced to the Satvahanas (1st Century BCE – 3rd Century CE), Rashtrkutas, and Chalukyas (6th – 12th Century CE) , its reinvention is largely credited to Bal Gangadhar Tilak, ostensibly to foster ‘nationalistic’ feelings among the masses, to counter the influence of the British colonisers. Since then, the public ‘mandaps’ have built elaborate sets and Ganpati has taken many a form, only revealed to the faithful during the ‘mukhdarshan’. In recent times, however, the more famous Ganpati mandals seem to be locked in a race for the most expensive celebration or the largest statue possible.

So trust the enterprising memory of a playwright like Ramu Ramunathan, the irrepressible chronicler of Mumbai’s many lives, to bring forth a past when the Lord in his ‘mandap’ not only blessed scientific temper and rationality but also took the form of Saint Eknath to bless a young Dalit boy. In times such as these, when history seems to either not exist as or only exist in the form our rulers want it to, telling the truth becomes an act of dissent. And in the true tradition of our poets and writers, this tale too, while dissenting, entwines history, mythology, and folk tales with the stories of the wise people who live on this land and pray to its many Gods.

In the play, Ganpati, the narrator, remembers a time that is now long gone. In the ‘mandap’, he meets a hardy family that has traveled from afar for the ‘darshan’. The family’s members are being pulled in all directions by the often conflicting tides of tradition and modernity. There is change in the air. How does he fare when faced with a changing city that seems to have forgotten the many Bappas that have graced its ‘mandaps’ ? Does anyone remember ?