Mumbai shines with grand festivities
On Wednesday, when the grand new temple at Ayodhya held special rituals for its first Ram Navami, including a ‘Surya Tilak’ ceremony, when a beam of sunlight touched Ram Lalla’s forehead at noon, Mumbai celebrated the festival with extra fervour this year.
Ram Navami is celebrated on the ninth day of the Shukla paksha in Chaitra. The period from April 9, the first day of the month of Chaitra, which was celebrated as Gudi Padwa, to Ram Navami on April 17, is called Chaitra Navratri, which is a period of worship for the nine incarnations of Shakti. The last day of the festival, called Navami, is the day when Lord Ram was born.
In Mumbai, temples, residential associations, and cultural groups held day-long programmes to mark the day. One of the biggest public events to mark the day was held at Lokhandwala Township, Kandivali. Over 30 housing societies, Lions Club, Gujarati Samaj, Shri Sanatan Seva Sankalp Sangh, Sanatan Ekta Manch, Brahmakumaris, and International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), joined the celebrations at Green Meadows. The programmes organised by Green Meadows Charitable Trust included a ‘shobha yatra’ with tableaux and bhajan-kirtan at Sai Mandir.
The Shree Ram Mandir in Wadala, called the ‘Ayodhya of Maharashtra’ and the city’s most important shrine to the deity, celebrated the 60th Ramnavami Utsav this year. Religious programmes at the temple started on Gudi Padwa day on April 9. On Ram Navami, the temple organised a chariot ceremony called ‘Brahma Rathostav’, with thousands of devotees pulling the chariot carrying the image of the deity.
At Matunga’s 100-year-old Sri Ram Mandir, also known as Ashtika Samaj temple, devotees got an opportunity to perform abhishek with milk on the idols of Sri Ram and his consorts. ISKCON’s temples in Wada, Chowpatty, Juhu, Thane, Mira Road, and Kharghar, organised Ram Darbar abhishek, shringar, aarti, and katha.