Accompany Me On My Journeys

(image 2 courtesy: photos.ibibo.com/photo/2577574/haji-ali)
I finally made the much delayed trip to the Haji Ali mosque today with Narangee. Somehow I felt it came at the right time. This semester I had taken a course titled Islam offered by Prof Syed Sayeed from the culture department.

I carried a stole as my father insisted that I carry a duppata, and for some reason I chose to wear a kurta and a churidar. Not like it mattered.

As soon as I stepped out of my building, there was a light drizzle which barely lasted five minutes. The weather for the short trip was perfect, cloudy skies shinning down on us, a sweet breeze accompanying us and the sea was as beautiful as always as we walked down the path to the mosque which is situated off Worli.

Narangee spoke about how she didn't like the stalls that lead up to mosques and temples and how they spoil the whole experience for people. I told her about my paper on the veil, why modern women adopt it as they think it saves them from being objectified as sexual objects. Just conversation, we saved catching up on each others lives for breakfast.We were greeted with strange smells, goats, stalls, people and lots of green.
 We started off at 7.45a.m. and it was a pleasant visit, no crowds, no shoving, no haggling. We had to tread very carefully as they were cleaning the marble floors of the mosque. (check picture ) We deposited our shoes and entered in the ladies only

section which was 1/4th the space of the men's section. We said quick prayers, and ducked our heads to be blessed by the mullah.




We walked around the mosque, there were rooms for the clergies in one section of the mosque, toilets, people cooking, clothes drying. The view of the sea was marvelous, we went to different sections to take in the view.

Post that we decided to head to MacDonald's for breakfast at Sobo Central, which felt too posh to be a MacDee. Their breakfast variety was as good as non existant, their hot chocolate sucks but their egg and cheese muffins passes. Theobroma would have been just ideal, next time perhaps.