vasai weekend - this was the last one

in which we drank ourselves silly in the company of rabbits and woke up when one of them was nibbling at my nose. red eyes and too small a mouth to be expressive, i don’t understand them as pets. but then that’s me. mohua and kaushik adore them.

the next morning rohit and benita took us for a drive through the vvvsr or the vasai virar sub region where they are inventorising heritage assets through the shopping complexes and housing colonies of the cidco layout that envelps the old villages still not completely erased. at diwanman talao a sleepy village square with a water tank was being upgraded by deepening and a metal grill on all sides. the benches faced inwards staring at the grill. a municipal market and school held two ends of it.

further down the road heading north numerous churches with floral facades and one on a hill with stunning woodwork holding up the roof and an indianised story of christ in the stained glass panels.

off the road we then came upon the ‘ashok stupa’ covered in blue tarpaulin being resotred. the shrine in front of it made of fragments of statues had a few devotees praying.

past the stained walls and already decrepit apartment complexes around sopara station, if you cross over to the other side you come upon a huge sea of low rise labour housing. benita said that someone told them it was transit housing; but did not know where they were transiting to. the bombay riots, i was told- or development projects. all the building industry gets its informal labour from here.

we drove back to have lunch in the residential enclave which threw my stomach’s constitution out of whack- and i have been at home all week resultantly. injections and antibiotics make me woozy and weary- until yesterday.