If you live in Mumbai, you'll be well acquainted with the chanda committee.
If you live in Mumbai, you'll be well acquainted with the chanda committee. Come Ganpati, Govinda, Dandiya, a group of boys land up at your door, brandishing a voucher book and demanding a donation for neighbourhood decoration and celebrations.
A throng clamouring to buy food to break the first day of the Ramzan
fast at Mohammed Ali Road. PIC/ Sayed Sameer Abedi
This was very common in the tenement housing colony where I used to live. Young and sanctimonious, I would refuse. We are not forcing you, give from your heart if you wish, they'd say. I don't believe in wasting money on religious celebrations, I'd respond primly. After a brief stand-off, I'd win.
I got over it. I came to feel at home in my very working-class neighbourhood. I felt affection for the jhankar beats, the psychedelic penants, the nylon shininess, the street party. I would pretend to be grudging, for old time's sake, but I began to cough up the chanda. I was even a bit chuffed the year our neighbourhood Ganpati pandal was featured as one of the best in the papers (Parliament shaped pandal with Ganpati as Somnath Chatterjee).
I hadn't grown up celebrating those festivals, but I enjoyed the rush around me ufffd the way people around me had fun. I also felt like being a girl in an overdecorated chaniya choli whirling under neon moons ufffd well, just for a few minutes. It's not like I really wanted to go dandiya or cheer Govindas or queue up for a peda. But I liked being part of the scene by association, welcome to abandon my wallflower status if I wanted, or just belong from the sidelines, like many others on the building steps and balconies. It was a comfortable half-belonging.
This all became more systematic, once I shifted to a middle-class building where festive celebration happen inside our compound, not the street, and the watchman collects each flat's contribution formally. I rarely go ufffd it's hard to be a practicing wallflower when the enjoyment has such a defined perimeter. I make do with smiling at the Happy Divali kandeel over the gate or the nativity whose magic lights turn the grass blue.
We observe Diwali, Holi, Dassehra, Dandiya, Christmas, New Year. Never Eid, though. The reason might be that there are no Muslims in our mixed building. Well, maybe one or two, which would make them a minority, thus not meriting a building celebration.
My friend who lives in a Gurgaon gated colony is busy around Halloween. Costumes for kids, sweets for trick or treating. I declare this cringe-making. A wannabe American thing, because gated communities imagine they are another country or perhaps a soap called Malibu Heights. She says I'm prejudiced. There are NRIs in the colony who celebrate it, the kids think it's fun and join in. I try to be open, because I believe in fun. If we can celebrate all festivals, then why not this? she asks. Fair enough. But, like in my building, they don't celebrate Eid. Why? The number of residents, I guess.
The number of residents did not seem to have stopped a reportedly large number of people from giving chanda (called entry fee) to attend a 'La Tomatina festival event' in Chhatarpur last weekend, however. Well, I guess they saw it in some movie and it looked like fun. I've no idea if they will also be having an Eid festival after seeing it in some Salman Khan movie or a number of residents aspirationality logistic or logic will get in the way.
Meanwhile, for friends observing Ramzan, I'll see you one of these evenings for some kababs, as they are also fun, even though I have not seen them in a movie lately. Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at ww.parodevi.com.
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.
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