Mumbai Sight Seeing

I worked for a Mumbai based company a decade ago. I was lucky enough to have a lot of friends in Mumbai who worked with me earlier. We would get together once in a while and go visit places. My Hyderabad roomies Anil and Mahesh were also there in Mumbai and Anil had self declared fan of Mumbai and unofficial tour guide. One Sunday evening, we set out first to Marine drive, walked about 2-3 kms and then went to the Bandra Band Stand Area. After going around the obvious places, we walked in the fashion street ( not sure of the name now) and visited a famous old church in the same area. We spent about 30 mins in the church and headed to Prabhadevi, to the famous Siddivinayak temple. The temple required no introduction as Anil had created a virtual image in our minds. It was around 7:15 PM when we got in to temple, an announcement was made that the temple doors will be closed for aarthi. We assembled in the prayer hall and I could tell there were more than 200 people. Soon, the aarthi started, the 200 people in the hall sang the bhajans which were in Marathi and Sanskrit. The entire place had so much energy and the audience was completely immersed. The audience continued to stand and chant the bhajans for over 30 minutes, the drum beats in the back ground added more rhythm!!. I became an instant fan of this temple and have not missed visiting this temple whenever I go to Mumbai.

Coming to our original story, after consuming the prasad, we headed back to the Dadar Railway Station and we were hungry. Anil was alcohol hungry, we ended up in a small bar and Anil had a mug of beer. In one day, we had completed a pilgrimage trip and signed off in a bar!!