Praying On Picket Road

Like everyone else, Lord Hanuman too has made his peace with cramped space in Mumbai. In the Dhobi Talao area of Kalbadevi in south Mumbai, the 200-year-old temple may be housed in a building called Hanuman Building but it’s shorn of any pretensions—the usual dome or anything amounting to a compound.

The bustle at Picket Road Maruti could be an extension of the general, larger busyness of the area, in which are also located a police station, a hospital, courts, the police commissioner’s office and sundry old shops. It’s not unusual to see poli­cemen and lawyers alongside relatives of the accused appealing to Hanuman, besi­des politician and film star bhakts. “On Saturdays, it gets very crowded,” says a police officer. “We post a special traffic constable.” Head priest Arun Mahant, a sixth-gene­ration mahant of the temple, corroborates this. “With a police station and court just across the road it is natural for us to believe it is very popular among cops and lawyers, though we see movie stars, corporates, doctors, politicians and astrologers in as many numbers. The temple is visited not just by the Hindus but devotees of all religions.”

The main Hanuman idol is ‘swayambhu’, which means it is not crafted out of stone or metal but has emerged in this form and grown over the years in size owing to the constant application of oil and sindoor. Besides Saturdays and Tuesdays—the regular Hanu­man days—the temple sees a huge crowd on occasions like Hanuman Jayanti, Ram­navmi and Palki.