Bandra fair

I have been staying in Bandra for the past six years and each year , the first week of September becomes a nightmare for commuting even within Bandra. Reason being the ever increasing crowd coming to Bandra around this time for Mt. Mary fest. I have seen devotees walking to St.Mary's church at Shivaji Nagar, Bangalore too. But since the apartment I stayed at Bangalore was not on the main thoroughfare to the church , I never realised how inconvenient this time of the year could be for the residents of the area. Bandra , for instance , is dominated by Christian community residents and even they resent the crowd coming to the fair. It has been increasing each year, and I can't imagine how worse it could get in another decade.
Other than thinking that its a nuisance for the residents, I never gave much thought to the faith or the importance of the occassion itself and till this year, I didn't even think of visiting the church just to see what attracts so much crowd. My interest in churches has thus far been only as a tourist and nothing more.

But, thanks to my friend, who pulled me out of my nest this year and forced me to walk to the church and see and experience the fest. Initially I was scared as to how long it could take to enter the church. It was a Saturday evening, and the weekend crowd was close to few lakhs. But I was pleasantly surprised that it was very much organized and the police and church security were doing a great job. Another pleasant factor was that we had to queue up along the road parallel to the sea front and we experienced a nice , cool breeze and there was hardly any discomfiture despite standing in the queue for close to an hour. In fact , I started enjoying the sea breeze after a while and vowed to come back regularly for evening walks around that area.  Then , I saw people buying wax idols from the shops along the road to give as offering. I got curious, and enquired what they were for. The shopkeeper told me that if a family member suffers from some ailment, we can buy a wax idol representing the ailment, for example, a heart shaped idol for heart patients, kidney shaped idol for kidney ailments, and various kinds of body parts can be given as offering. All of a sudden, I remembered my mother in law asking me to buy a eye shaped offering sold in amman temples in south and give it as an offering for my husband's eye problem.
I realised that I had not done that, and I immediately bought a pair of eye shaped wax idol and offered it at the church. Maybe this was the purpose that drew me to the church. Whether it is "Mary amma" or "Mariamma", it is the faith with which we make the offering that matters is the lesson I learnt this week.