God is a DJ

Ganesh Chaturti. The 11 day festival where everybody in bombay goes around dancing in the road blocking traffic or is stuck on the road cursing those who do. Of course I belong to the latter group. Wondered why these poor people spent so much money which they could ill afford on something that was so fleeting and served absolutely no purpose whatsoever! Wasn't it just a temporary escape? A refuge from the misery of everyday life? Sounds familiar? Replace road and religion with club and music and that is me and you. Startling to think of it that way isn't it? I was surprised by that thought myself.

What would happen if you married the two? And we get the dance ganapati or the trance ganapati as some call it. I heard about it from a friend of mine. A procession that plays trance instead of the usual amateur band/ bollywood tunes / bhajans. The crowd with more yuppie clubbers than middle class religious types. The sweet smell of marijuana instead of incense. That is the picture he'd painted. Sounded pretty good to me.

When we started out, it did look like he'd got it right - I saw a lot of people that I'd seen at the PVD show and then some. There were all sorts - candy ravers (very few of them), clubbers (the majority) and even a few goths. But as we went along, people joined in from the sidewalk. At first it seemed like fun - party on the road open to all. In about an hour's time it had degenerated from that to something like a mumbai local train in peak hours - and second class. Not my words, but the irrepressible D's (D's witticisms beg to be recorded and reproduced in print and I think I'll do it sometime). Been there, done that. So now we decided that we had enough of being pushed and shoved and trampled upon. Moved out on to the other side of the road and watched the procession move on. Apparently, others had dropped out even before us. Now the entire set of clubbers were on the sidelines and the crowd was just the onlookers who had jumped in. Sigh. Maybe the religious (and definitely drunk) types had a right to reclaim the dance ganapati from us - I'd heard someone try to chant "Ganapati Bappa Moriya" once over the music - and even the DJ did try once. But we wanted none of that - nobody joined in. It was pretty clear that we were there just to party on the road - call it an Indian version of the Berlin Love Parade with just one float if you will.

Here is to temporary escapes! May they sustain us forever ;-)

ubergeek, the