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2023 - The Year That Was

Places impact you for a variety of reasons. And the same place impacts different people in different ways. This is especially true when it comes to spiritual experiences, where every single person’s experience is unique. And personally, every spiritual experience is unique, the same person can have different deeply spiritual experiences at different places, at different times. This thought has emerged because of my own experiences over the years, but especially so this year, with different and unique experiences at various places I have visited recently. I began this year with a visit to Baroda (Vadodara) with friends. It was meant to be a relaxed trip, a touristy trip, with our sons. We enjoyed ourselves to the hilt, but the highlight of that trip was a visit to the Lakulisha temple at Pavagadh. It was the iconography of the temple that I connected with, and I spent a few hours simply lost in the details of the figures carved around the temple. There was an indefinable connect with
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Snapshots from Mumbai - Salt And the City

Vast tracts of land cut up into squares - each filled with water... and sometimes, a white mound by the side.... These are the salt pans which line the highways leading into the city of Mumbai.....




At one time, this tiny island was only inhabited by fishermen, who caught the fish, which were then plentiful, made salt from the same water that gave them the fish, and stored the fish with the salt. They made their living from the sea, and considered it their God. That time has long gone. Mumbai evolved from a sleepy fishing island to the throbbing port city of the British, to the commercial capital of India. 


These salt pans may not produce the bulk of the salt eaten by the country, but they still have their use. These salt pans, and the mangroves lining them are what keep our island afloat. Over the years, we have occupied land which had lain wild for centuries, reclaimed land from the sea, and even cut mangroves and filled in these salt pans, to build houses for our ever growing population. I wonder how much more the island can tolerate before finally allowing itself to be submerged into the sea once and for all. 

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Location: Eastern Express Highway, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Comments

  1. NeerajMay 13, 2013 at 7:34 AM

    The development in Mumbai (and India, in general) is highly unsustainable. I fear what will happen to Mumbai once sea level rises... no more Marine Drive. Can you imagine?

    ReplyDelete
  2. SudhageeMay 28, 2013 at 4:19 PM

    The controversy and politicking over the salt pan lands is one more in the innumerable controversies surrounding the city. The only losers are the people who live off this land.

    ReplyDelete

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