Rajmachi was not an easy trek. While we completed it successfully, we had our share of obstacles; not major but a few hiccups. Lord Ganesha is considered to be the vignaharta or the vanquisher of obstacles. Hence we thought it would be apt to thank Him for helping us successfully overcome all obstacles in our trek. Siddhivinayak is the most renowned temple, situated at centrally located Dadar. Sunday would have been an ideal day, however Sunday being Sankashti, the temple would be over crowded, giving us barely any time with the Lord. With these thoughts, we zeroed in on Saturday as the day for our visit.
As expected, the temple was far less crowded and we had a good darshan of Shree Siddhivinayak. We has planned to meet at the Siddhivinayak temple on Saturday morning at 10:00 AM. Askhay and Prasanna were the first to arrive and the rest tricked in gradually. Chatting and chaos are synonymus with us. As we all gathered, we started chatting and talking about things that happened over the days since Rajmachi and during the Ganeshotsav. Not that we need an occassion or topic to talk on, but then when we have some, we do not miss out. Chaos ensued after that on what do we take as prasad, from where, and a few other topics. Eventually, all was sorted and we moved in. There wasn't much queue and it was a quick way to darshan. Traditionally, we sit in the temple for two minutes after the darshan, before moving out. We took this chance to distribute the prasad. By the time we had darshan and were out of the temple, it was noon and Pranav dropped in.
All our plans include food and today was no exception. As it was Saturday, a few had opted for to be vegetarians for the day. We (slowly) moved out of the temple to plan for our next destination, the hotel for lunch. Abhijit had a some plans, so had to move on and wasn't able to join us for lunch. In that period, Siddhesh joined in, so the count stood. Searching a veg hotel for lunch was not a difficult task and we ended up with Gypsy for some authentic Maharashtrian veg food. Some of the converted vegetarians had a change of mind looking at bharli wangi and waran bhath. So the venue and minds changed. We landed up at Gomantak for a full fledged konkan cuisine. That food suits our palate the best. Unfortunately, the veg food at such places is not very highly recommended and the pure vegetarians had to suffer, while the rest gorged (that usually happens).
We had a few plans post lunch, but the lunch being heavy, it took us some time to move out and reach Shivaji Park. At 3:00 PM, it's not difficult to find a space in Shivaji Park, that is if you don't mind sweating in the sun. We managed to find a shade and rested ourselves. The plans were not much of tasking (thankfully), still were interesting. The first of those was announcement of our next plans. We plan to visit Shantikunj at Panvel on Nov 16-17. To discuss the details of this visit, we would be meeting on Oct 20 at Shivaji Park at 4:00 PM. The next was even interesting. We are planning to launch a book on our Rajmachi experience, thanks to Gauri. The first chapter of the book was shared with all those who were present and everyone is now awaiting to read the whole book. The book is set to release in November. And if this was not all, we also announced the plans of a movie. No, not movie watching, but creating a movie. The movie would be created by the entire Maha GSB team, from scripting, to directing, to acting and even editing. A very rough outline on what the movie would be, was shared by Tanuja, our scriptwriter. So await the blockbuster coming your way.
With all this in one day, after a heavy, showed the level of energy that the team has. It was about 4:00 PM by then and time to move back to our own tracks. Sadly, we were not able to cover the very special debate on our agenda. JD, who had specially come for that was a bit disheartened. But we promise to come back on that in our next coffee session at Shivaji Park on Oct 20.
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