Mysore, as you must be aware is renowned for its 10-day long Dussehra festival. The festival concludes on Vijayadasami day in a grand fervor. So my friends and I took this expedition to mysore from Bangalore on the Vijayadasami day. We four of us, reached mysore at around 9:30 a.m. For a fest run by the state governement, it was well-organised. Information kiosks were placed at all tourist places as well as at public transport places. On reaching there, we found that there were two events which was not to be missed on that particular day. One was the jumbo savari and the other is torch light parade. On making enquiries at the ticket counter we found that the tickets had to be bought from MUDA, acronym for Mysore Urban Development Authority. This place was close to the railway station, so we reached there in no time. To our shock, tickets for torch light parade alone was available. It cost us 100 bucks each. As for the jumbo savari tickets, we were given the cold shoulder :( But after loitering around the place for a while, we asked some guy near the gate if we could get those tickets somewhere. And he took us to some other agent who showed us few platinum invitations which were originally meant for the VVIPS. Our eagerness to get our hands on the platinum invitations made us take little notice of the 500 bucks demanded by him per ticket. Only later on did I find that those invitations were actually free VIP passes possibly embezzled by those agents and sold to the unwary tourists. The Jumbo Savari was scheduled at 12:30 p.m, but we were asked to arrive at the mysore palace one hour before the scheduled time for security reasons. On reaching the palace, our hopes for VIP treatment dashed because every tom, dick and harry had platinum ivitations with them and probably they got it for free too. But nevertheless, we stood in the long queue to get into the grounds. Security was beefed up for the celebrations and there was thorough frisking. On being let inside, we scampered all around to sit on the place with the best viewpoint. Shucks, there was no shelter provided for the "platinum invitees", and as it is so true in these cases, the weather was damn hot.We got ourselves seated somewhere in the middle of the grounds. After a while, three tuskers enclothed in its royal garb marched across in full splendour. The barded tusker in the middle, Balarama was carrying the chamundeshwari devi's deity for the tenth and the last time. The chief minister and the mayor whom initially we mistook as the Mysore Raja flagged off the procession by making floral offerings to the deity. Forty-five tableaux from different parts of the state was shortlisted for the procession. All tableaux were unique but tableaux worth a special mention are Infosys, railways, airways, mysore sandal soap and many others . There were tableaux signifying the various cultures as well as the technological civilization. Along with the tableaux, there were folk dances, yoga and other cultural troupes. Some artists carrying a lot of thingies on their heads climbed and balanced on ladders, few blew fire, many boogied-woogied..not a moment was boring. They heightened our festive spirits, which was already by that time half-baked in the scorching heat. Iam a sucker for cultural processions such as this, but by the time the two-hour procession got over, i got more than i asked for. Finally the procession and our mana over the sun got over. We quickly doused ourselves and went ahead for having lunch.
During our pursuit to find a good hotel, we chanced upon an exhibition near the palace. We went inside hoping that we could get something to eat there. We had an unappetizing lunch in a stall. The torch light parade was timed at 6:30 p.m, so we had plenty of time to look around in the exhibition. Th exhibition had few interesting exhibits promoting karnataka tourism,R.B.I.. After a while, we headed to the Banni Mantap grounds where the torch light parade was to be conducted.
Security was insanely tight at the Banni Mantap grounds. And guess what, the police didnt allow people with cameras or for that matter even bags inside the ground. I was frustrated beyond measure because this info was not printed anywhere on the tickets.(Or amybe it was printed. I didnt know what to make of the kannada fonts). Not knowing what to do, my friend Guru and I had to go to the KSRTC bus stand to keep our bags in the cloak room there. And in that course, we missed the para-gliding stunts by the army :(. And after the security checks, which were so thorough that i felt myself being sieved, we were let inside .
The first show of the event was stunts by the army on motorcycles. The daredevilry was pure awesomeness. They showed utter disregard to the art of properly riding a motorcycle. They stood, rolled, stood atop a ladder on the motorcycle and at the same time, rode it as well. Some of the acts were really breathtaking. This was followed by folk dances by school children. I had enough share of folk dances for the day already, so it was boring. The folk dances by different folks continued for some one hour. The next event was laser show, but after having once seen Vijay Mallya's laser show at the IPL, this was, not suprisingly, slipshod. Then came the real show stealer, torch light parade. 400+ artists holding torch lights marched to the ground in perfect sync. Holding those flames, they made various formations which created imageries of various phrases like "happy dasara", "Jai Karnataka","Jai Hind" vagera vagera.. A scintillating display of fireworks marked the end of the parade.
The bus back to bangalore arrived two hours late at 2:00 a.m. Reached Bangalore at around 5:00a.m. Gosh, somehow struggled our way to home and i was asleep before i hit the bed.