Mumbai Meri Jaan III

10th January:-
This day was dedicated to temples and Ragesh initially was totally against it. We again met at Thane, took a train to Dadar.
As soon as we got out of Dadar, we saw many roadside kajra shops; I haven’t seen so much flowers in any place. It was a busy market area below a flyover and we walked across it to catch a taxi to siddi Vinayak temple.
Siddi Vinayak temple was nice beautiful, but crowded, I never expected to see idol from so near, it was bit mesmerizing. It looked like a modern building to me, with LCD TVs here and there. Prashads were free, and my friends bought some photos of the idol.
We came out and had a delicious breakfast which almost filled my tummy till neck. Today we tried pav bhaji, poori and some samosas.
From there we took another taxi till Mahalakshmi temple. An elderly taxi driver complaining about the indiscipline driving of youths drove us slowly to Mahalakshmi temple.
This was a bit older temple and we were invited by a small Shiva temple below the main temple. We gave our salutes to them, and walked again inside a busy market line and reached Mahalakshmi temple. Lakshmi was accompanied by Saraswathi and Sakthi in this temple.

Once we completed submitting our requests, we walked down to Haji Ali Darkah. Sea and markets on both the sides, Haji Ali Darkah was a completely different package when compared to the other two religious places, which we visited early in the morning. I had been to many Darkahs but there was something different in this one, was it the location, sea breeze, the crowd, the way worshiping, I don’t know, something very different. We spent some time on the sea rocks behind the darkah. As soon as Subha and Ragesh saw the sea, they jumped like kids and it took a long time for me to get them out of there. Instant photographers followed each family or group whoever visited the place. After escaping from them we came back to the dock and back to the main road. Even after a very deep search in each shops, Subha couldn’t find her micro Quran.



We had plan of having lunch at noorani’s in front of Haji Ali, but we had to go to another temple. So seeing the chickens at that shop from outside, we took another taxi to mumba devi temple.
Mumba devi temple was in the middle of very old, tiny bazaar lanes. Around 50-100 small shops, surrounds the temple on all the four sides. They say that it was because of this devi, the city is called as Mumbai. She has blessed, that no one in the city will sleep empty stomach. I now understood why 1000s of people try reach here trying to find their destiny...



Enough of taxi, now we decided to take bus for whatever distances it may be. We took 141 numbered BEST bus to Valkeshwar bus stand. We had to reach Banganga one of the very oldest area in Mumbai.
We reached the Valkeshwar temple and Banganga after checking with a couple of mumbaikars, It was walk able distance from the bus stand. We walked through the Banganga Pond, which people said was built in 1200 AD, it was atleast 200 meters in length and 75 meters in width, but today the pond is no more usable, it was filled with lot of garbages. We reached the Valkeshwar temple at 1545hrs and the temple was closed till 1600hrs.



Since, Ragesh was too tired he sat in front of a house and started relaxing. I and Subha took a walk around the place to check out how the oldest part of the busiest city looks. In that very tiny area atleast 1000 houses may be there, atleast 4 per house. All of them haven’t even wasted a single inch of land. Houses were built one over another, with one room, one and half rooms, with or without toilets. The small lane, we entered never seemed to end, even though it was a single lane, we didn’t want to lose the route and we returned.



We returned to the temple and after worshipping lond shiva we proceeded towards Hanging Gardens and Babulnath temple. We took another bus, and got down at hanging gardens. First I didn’t understand the reason behind naming that place as hanging gardens, later we were told that Mumbai’s water supply in olden days, were distributed from below this garden. Since this garden was hanging over the distribution system, it was called as hanging gardens.
We took some small downsteps, to reach Babulnath temple, which was located below hanging gardens. Babulnath temple, one of the oldest temples in Mumbai was very silent and beautiful. One flutist was playing flute which made the whole area divine. Initially I thought it was some music system, which was playing. This was not much crowded but it was very peaceful in the heart of the city. We rushed back to hanging gardens to see Queen’s Necklace.
The whole Marine drive area can be seen from Hanging Gardens, which at night looks like a Diamond necklace. After witnessing a very beautiful view of Marine drive, we took another bus, which took us next to Taj hotel.
Since, we missed our lunch at noorani this morning; we planned to compensate it by having dinner at Bademiya. We rushed to Bademiya before it got crowded. Even then we had to wait for 45 minutes to get a seat, next to some old godown. I really have to mention about Bademiya here, it is just a roadside hotel, and it seems earlier people were having food only by standing. Till date, the hotel is on road, and the whole lane is blocked for these guys every night. Located exactly behind Taj, Bademiya seems to have cut atleast 50% percent of Taj’s income from its restaurant. Most of the regular guests book their rooms in Taj and have their dinners here. Why so special, we were waiting to find out.




We ordered romali roti and bhunna, and BHEJA FRY. I loved the bheja fry and romali roti was even special there. We had to share our table with 3 others and we never minded it because we all were lost in the taste of Bademiya. Tables were put on the road were never empty, and even people never hesitated to sit on their bikes, or cars to have dinner. We had to run as fast as we could to catch the train to our rooms.
Ragesh, wanted to reach home soon to sleep soon, because he had to go to office the next day.I dropped my friend at Ghansoli and took the last local on that route to Thane, thus achieving my 3rd wish of travelling in empty last local. It was bit scary but I was able to travel all alone in the empty local coach, that too in the foot board.
By the time I reached the room, Ragesh was already sleeping, I also started snoring in a couple of minutes………………….