Round Up of some Mumbai Durga Pujas of 2011

above : Vashi Durga Puja 2011

above : Poonam Nagar Durga Puja 2011

above : Kandivali Durga Puja 2011

above : Kandivali ( Thakur Village ) Durga Puja 2011

above : Powai Durga Puja 2011

Saptami schedule was Kandivali and Poonam Nagar and Vashi on Ashtami ...

Was at the Powai pandal both days for anjali & bhog !!!

This year the food stalls at all the pandals are serving lip-smacking stuff all bongs love - fish fry / rolls / cutlets / biryani / mishti doi ... awesome yumminess :-)

At least couple more pujas to be visited planned for Nabomi :

http://northbombaydurgapuja.com/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lokhandwala-Durga-PUJA/250686661640375

and possibly the ones in Navy Nagar and Ram Krishna Mandir on Bijoya Doshomi morning ...

Durga Puja Pandal @ Powai Mumbai 2011

Got a sneak preview of the Durga Puja pandal under construction near my home ... this year the Puja venue has been shifted as the original ground has been converted to a bus stand ...

A smaller ground but lets hope the scale of the Puja is not compromised.

Looking forward to the week of 2nd October !!!

jigsaw puzzle

One of deep's favourite puzzles probably because of the animal theme -
tnx adi !!!

Durga Puja 2010 at Powai, Mumbai

pic above : yummy fish fry with mustard sauce !!!!!

This might well be the last Durga Puja celebration at Hiranandani Powai. In its 5th year, this puja organized by Powai Bengali Association, has come a long way in terms of scale and popularity. Unfortunately the ground where the pujas are held has been earmarked for construction of a bus stand !!!

Cant think of any alternate grounds nearby to organize the puja at this scale. Having a relatively large ground also allows the setting up of an entertainment zone to showcase local amateur talent and import the pros from Kolkata ... bengali rock band Chandrabindu, Usha Uthup etc are artistes who perform here regaularly.

Finally there are the food stalls ... with all the goodies loved by bengalis ... mochar chop, fish fry, chiken roll, mutton kosha, luchi alur-dom and biriyani. Gobbled up quite a few fish fries with a dash of mustard myself today evening and looking forward to checking out more dishes tomorrow for dinner.

Hope to visit the Lokhandwala, Poonam Nagar, Santra Cruz pujas tomorrow ... lets see if can can squeeze in the Kandivli pujas ... unfortunately will have to give Shivaji Park, Vashi pujas the miss this year.

Maruti Suzuki Ritz ZXi

Just replaced my 10 year old Hyundai Santro with a Maruti Suzuki Ritz ZXi.

The Indian car market is so overcrowded with small hatchbacks that buyers are spoilt for choice - one can choose from Hyundai i10/i20/Santro, Nissan Micra, Volkswagen Polo, Fiat Punto, Ford Figo, Indica Vista, Skoda Fabia, Chevy Beat, about half a dozen offerings from Maruti Suzuki - Alto, AStar, WagonR, Swift and of course the Ritz.

So why select the Ritz ??? For me it was all about looking for the best cost - value equation. Thankfully the decision making process was made quite simple ... Maruti Suzuki made me the best exchange offer for my existing Hyundai Santro ... and the Ritz had additional discounts to boot. Finally within the Ritz versions ( LXi, VXi and ZXi ) the ZXi came bundled with all the safety features I wanted.

Ironically Hyundai simply refused to buy back my 10 year old Santro ... while Maruti Suzuki offered me INR60K + INR12K "Loyalty Bonus". I was wondering how I'd demonstrated loyalty to Maruti Suzuki by driving a Hyundai for years !!!

Maybe they should call it the "Loyalty Shift Bonus" ... anyway who cares.

Kandivali Durga Puja - Thakur Village Bangiya Pratisthan

By far the best of the 3 Durga Pujas we checked out @ Kandivali ... This one is in Thakur Village on the right side of the Western Express highway as you approach Kandivali from Andheri.

Chandrabindu one of the more well known bengali rock bands was the attraction for the evening and we stayed on for a few numbers and also gorged on some neat egg-chicken rolls from the snack stalls.

However the rockstar of the evening was one of the committee members who was the stand-in master of ceremonies, though a stand-up comedian would be a more accurate description. Check out what he had to say while announcing the winners of the children's painting context which probably had been organized earlier in the day, "Abhi hum us bacchon ka naam bulayega jo bade hokar bada bada artist aur painter banega. Yeh bachcha sab humara bada dada se upohar lega. Hum aap logo ko anurodh karta hai ki jaise jaise mai bachcha ka naam bolega aap sab jor jor se taali dekar us bachcha ko protsahit karega !!! **" Needless to say the audience was in splits by then ...

**Loose translation for folks who dont know bong+hindi ( we need to have a name for this lingo ... just like "hinglish" is the unique combo of hindi+english ) ... unfortunately the humour is always lost in translation, "Now I will announce the names of the kids who will grow up to become famous artists and painters. The kids will collect their awards from our big brother ( refering to the president of the committee ). When I announce the names I request you to clap loudly to encourage the kids".

Getting ready for Durga Puja 09 at Powai !!!

The Hiranandani Durga Puja is now a stone's throw from our new home and this is where we'll spend most of our time this year ... the pandal is getting ready ...

This year again we'll not be going to Kolkata for Durga Puja ... but this time both Baba & Ma are visiting ... and with the learnings from last year's pujas we should have a great time !!!

Grihapravesh at Gundecha Hills

"Griha+Pravesh" in Sanskrit translates to "House+Entry" ... rituals performed while entering a new home.

The sun, moon & stars ( and a bengali brahmin pundit seen in the pictures above ) had to be aligned in order to finalize the date of moving into our new home.

For the uninitiated, a Grihapravesh may be done only by a pundit on specific auspicious dates as per the Hindu almanac ... In the meantime the contract at our previous rented apartment was running out, the landlord was chasing us to vacate and obviously the new home had to be made ready to live in.

So you get the picture ... pulling off the Grihapravesh while tweaking all these constraints was no walk in the park ... and we did it on 29th June 2009 !!!

Got this new app "evernote" installed on my mobile ... quite cool ... it allows me to create notes, take pictutes, record voice and video from my mobile and also upload all of these to a website which I can then access from my laptop. I think I can also email the stuff directly to blogspot and it gets automatically published ... well lets see if this post comes up on my blog.

Note from Evernote by udayand

the cupboard is almost ready

http://www.evernote.com/ Remember everything. Sign up for free

A new home in mumbai

 

I'd mentioned somewhere earlier on the blog that I was getting rooted in mumbai ... Well the roots just got deeper and stronger.

After months of research, cost benefit analysis, speculation on real estate trends and outlook we finally took the plunge and bought our first apartment in mumbai !!!

More details on the evaluation / selection process and key learnings will follow ( hopefully once we settle down ) ... Here are a couple of snaps taken at our new place as we get ready to move in over the next few days ...

http://udayand.blogspot.com

Sent from my Windows Mobile® phone.

Buying nice stuff for niece

This is also a mobile blogging test for my new samsung i780 !!!

Photographing diwali firecrackers

 
 

Of late everyone seems to be buying and flaunting their expensive DSLR cameras with an array of wide-angle / super long focal length lenses and filters ... and all they talk about is the relative merits and demerits of Canon EOS vs Nikon DXXX, how best to use lenses, filters, other accessories and post-processing of the "RAW" format pictures ... enough to give me a headache.

I was travelling with one of these guys the other day and the weight & size of his camera kit was actually more than his laptop bag. He had to literally beg the airport staff to let him carry both laptop and camera as cabin baggage ... at one point he was even considering checking in his laptop bag and holding on to his precious camera stuff !!!

Finally they relented and he was allowed to carry both laptop and camera kit as cabin baggage. Throughout the flight he bugged me with his tall camera tales and exploits ... I suspect he thought of himself as the next Gautam Rajadhyaksha. 

According to this GR wannabe getting a perfect shot of firecrackers was the hallmark of a good camera and the holy grail of photography ... he showed me a few he'd taken with his Nikon D4ox.

Now I have a Canon Powershot A620 which is a point and shoot and though its supposed to have some manual controls I'd never used any of them in the 2 years I've been using the camera. So this Diwali I decided to experiment with aperture and shutter speed and take pictures of firecrackers ... of course I had no special lenses and worse I could not even find my tripod. 

Anyway I took a few snaps propping my camera on the window grill and the results are not too bad !!! So I guess I'll just stick to my trusted point and shoot and pass up the temptation to upgrade to a DSLR ... at the very least I'll never have to worry about checking in my laptop bag :-)

Shivaji Park Durga Puja, Mumbai 2008

  

The Mumbai Sarvajanin Durgotsob at Shivaji Park is the oldest Durga Puja in Mumbai ... 2008 is the 72nd consecutive year !!! Its also well documented that Shivaji Park is where all Mumbaikar cricketers Tendulkar, Manjrekar, Gavaskar and other xxx-kars have honed their skills ... not so well documented is the fact that I've also played some cricket at this hallowed ground but I'm digressing :-)

Given all the background above this was one pujo I just had to see for myself ... so Piya and I drove down to Shivaji Park today. To be honest it was a bit of an anti-climax as we had very high expectations. 

The pandal itself is tucked into one corner of the park, totally enclosed ... almost claustrophobic. In fact its not even a pandal in the true Bengali style which would usually have a theme ... more of a large tent actually with no external decoration. There are some food stalls inside the enclosure and I tried a egg-chicken roll ... oil-soaked and tasted like cardbord ... totally unpalatable. 

Overall, there is something missing in the ambience ... could not put a finger to it ... but maybe the whole affair is too commercialised and lacks personal touch and attention to detail which is the hallmark of a good pujo anywhere. 

My Top 3 Durga Pujos in Mumbai

 

 

Here are my top 3 Durga Pujas in Mumbai ... may change though after we visit some more Pujos over the next 3 days :-) 

Best Pujo ambience : Ramkrishna Mission Durga Pujo, Khar ( Top Left )

Best Protima : North Bombay Sarbojanin Durga Pujo, Santa Cruz ( Top Right )

Best Pandal & Lighting : Hiranandani Gardens, Powaii ( Bottom 2 )

The phrase "Pandal Hopping" is appropriate for Kolkata where there are 3 pujos on every street each a stone's throw away ... in Mumbai driving from one pandal to the other is an ordeal ... takes hours with all the traffic ... then actually discovering the pandal & finding a parking slot ... its more of a "Pandal Expedition" !!! 

Durga Pujo @ Mumbai 2008

Durga idol being transported to a pandal ... picture taken from my car on Sahar road.

Usually we spend Durga Pujo in Kolkata as Piya gets all nostalgic about adda sessions and cultural evenings at the Durga pujo in her SaltLake para, egg-chicken rolls in Park street, phuchka anywhere, Maddox square where she loves to gossip endlessly with her JU friends, khichuri bhog, shopping in Gariahat and New Market, night-long pandal hopping sessions and in general everything else associated with pujo in Kolkata. 

This year however we're planning a longish vacation in November, so nostalgia notwithstanding, are completely stranded in Mumbai due to paucity of Privilege Leaves. So the idea is to make the best of the situation and check out the Mumbai Durga Pujo scene which Mumbai bred bongs assure me is quite happening ... thanks to all the bongs in bollywood !!!

Here's the itinerary we are planning :

5th Oct : 

a) Amra Probashi Durga Pujo, Hiranandani Estate, Thane

b) Evening at the Pujo at Hiranandani Gardens, Powaii

8th Oct :

a) Juhu Cutural Association near Rithambara College.

b) North Bombay Sarbojanin Durga Pujo, Santa Cruz (w) ... the one where Rani Mukherjee apparently hangs out. 

c) Pushpanjali at Ramkrishna Mission Durga Pujo, Khar

d) Bhog at Shivaji Park Durgostav 

e) Evening timepass at Lokhandwala Durgotsav ... organised by Abhijeet and where you can see the Bollywood biggies paying their homage to Ma Durga.

9th Oct :

a) Chembur Durga Pujo ... the pandal this year reportedly is inspired by Victoria Memorial

b) Vashi Cultural Association ... read in the papers that they have a budget of 3 Crores ... should be the grandest of the lot ( as they say save the best for the last !!! ).

Ma also flew down from Kolkata to be with us during the pujo season so we should have a rocking time ... readers of this blog please leave a comment if there are any significant Mumbai Pujos missing here and also if you guys want to join us on our pandal hopping expedition any of these days ... more the merrier !!!

Two years of parenting ...

   

The picture on the left was taken the first night Deep came home from hospital, 6 days old, at about 2 am in the night when he finally decided to take a short nap. The one on the right from his second birthday all excited after cutting his birthday cake !!! How time flies ...

Its been an amazing journey ... intensely hectic but at the same time supremely rewarding. Two years of hands-on / on the job learning ... parenting is like diving into the deep end of a pool from a 10m board without having a clue about swimming ... there is no way to learn unless you take the plunge. Here are a few insights from experiences till date :

Maid in Mumbai : For a working couple in Mumbai ( where reliable day-care is a distant dream ) ... if both of you want to retain your jobs ( and sanity ) the first thing you need to finalize is a full time maid. We postponed this to the fag end of Piya's maternity leave which resulted in last minute fire-fighting to get just about anyone on the job without adequate screening. 

Our travails with maids could be the subject of another post ... suffice to say here that we had to change about six before we got one who's with us for the past nine months. In between maids we somehow scraped through by taking alternate days off or sending an SOS to our moms and flying them down from Kolkata !!!

Work Life Balance : You start to realise what's all the hoopla about work-life balance. For years I'd worked insane hours rarely leaving office before 9pm ... and this continued after marriage coz Piya herself worked late. Half the weekends were spent drafting reports and clearing piles of emails ... Well, all that quickly changed.

I needed to be back home by 7pm to see what the latest maid was upto ( Piya had to continue working late - compulsions of Software industry / US client etc ). Bringing work home was futile as Deep took to my laptops ( plural as he managed to spill tea on one and plucked out a couple of keys from the replacement ) as those proverbial ducks take to water ... and the weekends were packed with more to-do items than my outlook calendar had meetings on weekdays.

Net, I had to change my work ethic to fit in everything between 8.30am - 6.30pm ... gone were those coffee breaks and pleasant chit-chat with colleagues ... focus on work is the mantra at office ... and everything else other than work ie. "life" away from office !!!

Diapers cost shitloads of money : Do the math ... 15 bucks a diaper*10 diapers a day for two years ... And its not just diapers, all stuff to do with babies ie. baby food, clothes, toys, accessories are all strangely priced ... all exponential-inversely proportional to size & utility ... 

No wonder my current financial status is looking similar to the i-banks ( those few which are still in business ) ... almost bankrupt and in need of some urgent capital injection !!!

Dramatic lifestyle transformation : Gone are the days when we would decide to eat out on a whim, catch a late-night movie after office or just pick up the car keys and drive out on a weekend morning without any definite agenda. 

Watching movies now is strictly at home so an investment in a DVD player and home theatre is mandatory. Eating out and babies dont really gel ... no wonder so many restaurants have a no-kids policy. So, eating at home is in and eating out is out literally !!! 

Going out with a baby even to buy groceries is such a logistical nightmare ... more pre-work probably than I would need for a week long trekking expedition ... Diapers, bottles, infant formula, tissues etc etc. Not to forget the pram ... lugging it down to the car, folding and shoving it in, repeating the whole process at the destination and then again once back home. Net, take a "Baby's day out" should happen only when absolutely necessary !!!

Deep in China Valley

Yesterday, with a bit of apprehension we took Deep to "China Valley" ... as our first eating-out experience with him had been a bit of a disaster. A few months ago we'd gone to Oh! Calcutta and the first thing he'd done was to pull the table cloth with the result that all the bone china dishes and glasses fell on the floor and were smashed. 

My own first memories of eating out at a Chinese restaurant is from Lagos '81 when I was six years old. We had Sweet and Sour Chicken and Chicken Sweet Corn soup. But more than the food a couple of unrelated memories remain vividly etched in my mind : 

1) We were seated on a circular table and there was this disc at the center which one could rotate to pass the dishes and sauces round the table ... I'd found the concept very interesting and for years I assumed that authentic Chinese restaurants would always have this kind of table. 

2) The restaurant had a collection of magazines and one of them had the entire story of "Rocky" in a series of snapshots from the movie ... Stallone gulping down 7 raw eggs at a go, running across the streets of Philadelphia, battling with Apollo Creed and losing the match in the end with a split decision. I became a life-time fan and rooted for Stallone through the sequels of Rocky and then Rambo ... even watched the 2006 sequel - Rocky Balboa for old times sake !!!

Deep will not remember much about his first visit to a Chinese restaurant ( unless he peeks into this blog in the future ) but for Piya and me this was a defining moment ... Deep behaved admirably and was focused on a plate of noodles from which he neatly ate one noodle at a time ... and allowed us to enjoy our food in peace ... a sign of good times to come !!!