Mumbai after Ganesh Chaturthi

A meditation on traditions and contradictions

Marine Drive a.k.a. the Queen’s necklace a.k.a my favourite sealine, c. February 2023.

I am writing today’s essay from a small café in Mumbai — Mary Lodge by Subko, a space that feels designed for the upwardly mobile and gentrified — where queues spill into a narrow Bandra alley, beside a roadside cross with fading Catholic inscriptions, and into a tiled…