Wishful Thinking

Time to say ‘Many Happy Returns of the Day’ again. This time it's for Lord Krishna. Today's his birthday -- Janamashtami. So in keeping with Club tradition, we raised an extra laugh for him after the exercises. And Sushma Gupta distributed sweets (left pic) in his honour. But we did not clap and sing, ‘Happy Birthday to You’. Gods don’t like such rejoicing, in English.
Gods like pujas instead – the more elaborate the better -- even if it leads to skipping the morning exercises at the Garden. Lord Krishna would love you to also be soaked to the bones as strange-looking women pour buckets of water from their balconies on your head. ‘Govinda aala re’ songs play full blast on Bombay’s streets while hordes of dark, half-naked people form human pyramids, risking neck and bums to crack open a stupid matki strung on top. But that’s what janamashtami is all about.
A proposal is now pending with the club for celebrating the festival from next year with dahi-handi and the works. Srichand Arora is petrified. According to him, whether or not we manage to crack open the matki, “some of our members would surely crack open by the end of the day”.
But then, there are already some intelligent brains at work, planning out the formation of the human pyramid. At the base level, there would be the heavyweights like Dilip Babani, Kishor, Sitaram, Arora, Yusuf Rassiwala, and so on. Standing on their shoulders would be the medium weights – Harish Wadhwa, Bose, Arun Patil, Shekhawat, Jagmohan, etc. who in turn would support the ladies and left-over males like Bapu Rane and Grover in one or two tiers. And right on top would be Pratap Bhatt!
Now that's something for the Managing Committee to chew on.
Renu Babani's PICSPEAK:
* "Prasad for a special occasion."
* "Main nahin maakhan khaayo!"