One of the joys of travel is stumbling across unusual juxtapositions. A tiny temple in the middle of a shopping mall. A Mexican restaurant in an obscure Mongolian town. A Starbucks coffee shop in the middle of an Arabian Souk. In such places, you can’t help but wondering, “What is this place doing here? Who built it? And why did someone think this neighborhood needed something like this?!”
Not one but two such juxtapositions exist in the Gorai district of northwestern Mumbai, on a place called Dharavi Island. Here you can’t help but gawk at the impressive Global Vipassana Pagoda, a giant, golden meditation hall with a capacity to seat around 8,000 meditators. Completed in 2006 and modeled after the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar, the structure is the largest such meditation hall in the world.
Revered by local Vipassana practitioners as a holy site, the main hall contains a Buddha relic and features a large crystal atop the pinnacle of its dome. The spire, itself, is covered in real gold (while the rest is covered in gold paint). The main doors to the pagoda are wooden and hand-carved in Myanmar.
The Global Vipassana Pagoda is certainly an impressive site, especially when viewed from the river as you approach by boat. Upon seeing it in the distance, I remark to my wife, Donica, “Why in the world is there a Southeast Asian-style golden, Buddhist pagoda here in India, a Hindu country? I wouldn’t blink twice if I saw this kind of temple in Bangkok or Chiang Mai. But in Mumbai, it definitely stands out! It’s an absolutely lovely building — and utterly out of place.
But here’s the second odd juxtaposition. Just five minutes away from the very-holy Global Vipassana Pagoda is the EsselWorld, one of the largest amusement parks in India. Popular attractions here include the Rio Grande train (for kids), the Monsters in the Mist ride, Aqua Dive (a splash roller coaster) and Shot n Drop, a drop tower. There’s even a bowling alley. How strange to find a golden Buddhis pagoda in India. How even stranger to discover a modern theme park just a stone’s throw away. For context, imagine that every time you tried to pray at your pew in Notre Dame cathedral, you heard the roar of roller-coaster riders nearby as they raced down Space Mountain! Wouldn’t you ask, “Whose brilliant idea was this?!!”
I’m sure there’s a rational reason for the strange juxtapositions of Dharavi Island , but I choose not to question it. Sometimes it’s better to let a mystery remain a glorious, delicious mystery!
(What’s your relationship to mystery? Do you feel the need to understand every anomaly, or can you just “let it go”? To quote J Robert Oppenheimer, “Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.”
The next time you walk around your neighborhood, notice the unusual juxtapositions, the natural and man-made details that defy easy explanation – and just “let it go.” Don’t try to analyze it. Just accept the beauty of a world that still has a few delight mysteries left in it.)