Festival ‘season’ is upon us, a stint which lasts until January of next year. Last weekend we went to Vijayawada – the streets, splurging already with humanbeingshumanbeings, had gone wild in praise of the elephant god as Ganesh was paraded around on Rickshaws or displayed for worship in monochrome tents which glowed crassly with too many fairy lights.
(Vijayawada at night)
We left Vijayawada for Bhavani Island, a quick boat ride across into a ringfenced oasis of peace where the nutural beauty is, quite literally, policed. The floor is a thick green carpet, the high trees, the bushes, the flowers and NO TRAFFIC oh has there ever been such quiet before anywhere? But stick to the path and don’t drop litter or the police man will spit a shrill whistle in your ear.
Walking around the island, we entered a clearing where fully grown adults, including women in flowing saris, played on giant playground apparatus. Spiderwebs, rope bridges, swings and the like.
We wept with laughter. This, we concluded, was what the middle classes get up to in Vijayawada, when they’re not looking at caged monkeys and giant plastic dinosaurs in the Rajiv Gandhi gardens (a story for another time). We pondered it with a mango juice, looking out over the Krishna, over the mountains, and the hallucinating city alive with festivity.
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