This year Mahashivratri- the most famous hindu festival that involves praising the Lord of Death- Lord Shiva, was different for me.
Unlike most of the past years where I used to sit at home enjoy the holiday from school or work this year I celebrated it by doing something which was not entirely expected even by my great grandmother had she been alive today or by many other devotees or even my mom who pestered me to offer atleast milk to the great divine.
In contrast and oblivious to her demands I was forced to join my office team and a truck load of some 80 volunteers from all walks of life at Borivalli national park or what some of you might know it as the Sanjay Gandhi national park –the Lungs of the polluted Mumbai city.
Spread over 8 kms this beautiful national park is home to the shy leopard who loves to dine on humans every now and then but does it an a way that puts its life in danger as humans have this habit of poisoning every potential species which it sees as threat. While many of the people who live in it or not tribals but outsiders who some believe are encroachers on the forest land continue to live in the park but work outside of it.
Coming back to the Mahashivratri festival that was celebrated this year on March 5th I and my dedicated flock of environment lovers stood at 6.00 AM in the national park shivering from the chill inside the green canopy of the park to do what none of the visitors would have dreamed to be happening before they came inside the park to offer their prayers at the Kanheri Caves located inside the park. Though history says that the Kanheri caves were used by the Buddhist monks as a resting place the caves have been carved out of the huge mountains and offer a natural AC installed enclosure from the Mumbai heat.
As the devotees started pouring in from 6.30 AM in the morning we started what I had never seen done or done through out my life as an environment lover- protect Nature from plastic bags, cigarette and beedi’s (tendu leaves with tobacco) and chewing tobacco, bhang and liquor confiscation. Every visitor was forced to give up their thin plastic bags and their incense sticks which they carried along with their coconut to be offered to the caves inside, while they hung on to the plastic and their cigarettes as if these were their precious treasures for the day we grabbed these and threw them in a huge dustbin which you can see in the picture above, everything the tobacco, the Navy cuts and Wills and Goa pan masalas inside the dustbin to free the pristine beauty of national park from these litter. Though some may believe that awareness alone can stop people from carrying these inside nothing can ever stop the urge to take a puff inside or to spit the tobacco in the park.
Though what happened later was something which none of us temporary environment police could have imagined while we were on our confiscation drive. The agitated and pissed of crowd came back later and on their way out they searched the dustbin looking for their pack of treasures inside the dustbin full of lots of plastics and nicotine stuff!
Amazing how people never give up what they truly enjoy! A pack of cigarettes/ pan masala (chewing tobacco) even if it means searching in a public dustbin.
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