Light in Darkness: Bhim Jayanti in Gautam Nagar...

I live in Gautam Nagar, Dumping Road in Mulund. An area with mostly Buddhist families from across rural Maharashtra and have been living in Mumbai for the last many generations. The contradiction of the peace that Gautam Buddha evokes and the excess waste at the edge of the city that the Dumping Ground is, doesn’t hit anymore – especially when directing a rickshaw for home. The everyday here is punctuated by crisis and early-age deaths by addictions, who are left without any facilities to rehabilitate. There is a tiredness that clouds the days when you are in proximity with the worst ways your own loved one can deteriorate their lives – such witnessing numbs you in ways you cannot gauge. But, when Bhim Jayanti comes, the air hits differently. What seems like suffocation on other days is substituted with a feeling of immeasurable breadth of freedom.

Even in shortage of money, the residents make ends meet months prior in order to buy new clothes for their children, make assortments of sweets and savory snacks; varied types of muttons and so on. Every household is cleaned and decorated with lanterns, hoisted with Buddhist flags with Jai Bhim written on them.

A week before Jayanti, there is a different kind of exaltation. All of us come together and decorate the chawl with firecrackers. We make glue using wheat flour and hang the crackers across the chawl. Everyone participates in this activity. That festive feeling can be seen in every chawl. Children helping each other as they miss a step or beat in their dance, it is so nice to watch. Women finish their household chores early to attend the little ones in their missteps. Watching plays and attending plays. There are orchestra programs and Babasaheb’s songs like Soniyachi Ugavli Sakal, Buddha Aale Janma, Sonyan Bharli Oti, and many more. Songs of Wamandada Kardak like Bhimrao Majha Jhala and Jai Bhimacha Naara are also played and performed, along with many songs by other Dalit poets and singers. These songs are not just for entertainment, they give us energy and awareness, and remind us of Babasaheb’s thoughts.

On the intervening night of 13th and 14th April at 12 am, we gather in the Buddha Vihar and perform Buddha Vandana together with the Boudhacharya. That moment feels very peaceful and powerful. From there, we welcome 14th April – the birthday of our liberator, Babasaheb. On his 135th birth anniversary, he has only grown closer to our hearts. The attrition and state-produced difficulties through various forms of tiredness and impoverishment that seeps into our daily life, seems trivial. Life seems worthy of enduring its risks and challenges, there is so much to celebrate around this man who wrote volumes of books and each page and word relates to the lives we live and the feelings that are generated in our minds. 135 years later, he remains our guiding force into the world.

More than 1000 people gather for the Jayanthi rally. We dance, we sing, and we celebrate on the streets as if the world was fought and given to us and we looked at it in the face and said Yes. A Yes that is infused with so much force. It is all the form of love that we know at Gautam Nagar. A Yes.

Jai Bhim.