God is coming

Lakhs of visitors come from all over Maharashtra to visit the Sagareshwar temple

When our British and European friends wish to get away from the winter chill, they know they can always rely on us to go gallivanting with them in India. This time the venue was Goa. We planned for a long time and managed to get a beautiful house on rent on an island in the Mandovi river. Although this meant crossing the ferry every time one wished to go to the beach, it also meant at the end of the day we were in a rather unmolested environment.

With the Salim Ali bird sanctuary nearby, one woke up to the chirping of birds. A little dip in the pool and we would head for a shack for our day’s quota of prawns and crabs. After devouring all the seafood that their stomachs would allow them to order, the foreigners were left totally satiated.

My husband and I decided to stay back and drive to a little known town on the Maharashtra coast called Vengurla. It was only a two-hour drive from where we were in Goa, but it is strange how contiguous states can be so visually different. The houses, the little places to eat on the road were similar yet different. We reached our destination where we had booked a modest home stay. After the poshness of our stay in Goa, this little room seemed from another era. It was almost lunch time and our host led us to our dining space in their garden. As we sat surrounded by coconut trees and farming tools, it was easy to appreciate that the food would be low on style but high on food value. Sure enough the vegetarian thali when it appeared looked hugely appetising. Everything served was from their farm and cooked just before serving.
 

As we sat chatting with our host long after the last morsel had been polished off, we learnt that quite unknowingly we had arrived on a rather auspicious occasion. Apparently the next day, lakhs of visitors would come from all over Maharashtra to visit the Sagareshwar temple and take a dip in the sea. The Sagareshwar temple happened to be in the same lane that our home stay was on and we looked forward to some action the next day.

An evening stroll to the beach was wonderful because unlike Goa, beaches in Maharashtra are free of shacks and it was gorgeous to be on a beach with not a soul but us. The emptiness of the sand and the sea left us quite unprepared for the next day. 

The next morning as we took our car out to explore Vengurla, we realised many devotees were making a beeline for the temple. But it is only when we tried to get back at lunch time that we realised the jam we were in. Literally. We had planned to leave Vengurla early evening that day but now the traffic and the police made it impossible to enter the little lane which housed our home stay and the temple. We hung around at a little café for a while and when the crowds had thinned a bit pleaded with the police to let us into the lane. They finally relented and we pushed through the crowds at a snail’s pace.

Just as we were approaching our destination a group of devotees, like many before them, came towards us carrying a palanquin and other ritualistic yokes and banners. A big guy thumped on the car to stop us and said in a rather chastising manner in Marathi, “please don’t go further. God is coming”.