Rocks of Banganga.
My photographer friend and new resident of Mumbai, Hari Adivarekar and I, spent a few hours exploring the Banganga area last weekend. Beyond the bathing ghats of the Bangala tank, the beautiful Konkan village, temples and dhobhi ‘ghats’ is the rocky outcrops that sticks out into the ocean at low tide. Thanks to the Supermoon, the sea had moved a fair distance, exposing a vast expanse of beautiful rocks. The weather was good or not too hot and humid, as it usually is, and it was very pleasant to walk.
The path from the Banganga tank to the sea winds through narrow lanes if a typical Mumbai gaothan turned slum. The residents are progressively poorer as you get closer to the tide line. You can smell the salt seasoned low tide sewage smell of the sea as you approach and the smell of garbage. In the narrow lane we took, the children are playing in groups. Several games were in progress, all at the same time. Who can spin a top the longest? Then there was football and children flying kites.
Once we reach the sea wall and the rocks beyond, there were children flying kite. But it’s the rocks here that need to be seen. Geologists will have a field day deciphering its secrets. The marine biologists will have an even better field day looking hunting and observing life that teems here in the puddles and cracks. Simple folks like you and me should be careful not to slip and crack our skulls.
Siddharth Huckleberry Finn.
The rocks also teem with human activities. There are many men and women collecting different types of shells and among them a young lad who was digging between rocks using his finger. We went closer, to investigate and realised that in between the rocks is soil or clay with hundreds of worms that he was pulling out. He was planning to use them as bait.
We spent the next half an hour observing her and watching him go about life in a cool, calm and composed manner. According to Hari, “I relearned from him, the value of self-sufficiency and determination.” Such a simple everyday thing for him, we guess, but the pace at which he did what he did, made a big impact on two photographers who drifting through the sea of humanity.
We even gave him a nickname: Huckleberry Finn. His real name is Siddharth.
