Next time you visit the Siddhivinayak temple at Prabhadevi in the evening, just ask the gateman where the maalak (owner) is. He will point to a tall but weak and poor man.
With Ganeshotsav starting on Wednesday, lakhs of devotees will visit the temple over the next 10 days, but few, if any, among them will know that the poor man standing near the deity is the original owner of the temple.
Krishnakumar Patil’s family managed the temple for more than 100 years. Today, he is forced to live in a slum in a bylane near the temple because he has been denied a share in the vast income of the temple.
Patil, 60, lives in a small house with his ailing mother and sister. Despite his bitter experience with the temple management, he and his mother religiously attend the puja at the temple twice a day. The only positive they have is that they can directly enter the gabhara (inner sanctum) of the temple and participate in the aarti without any hindrance.
The temple trust employees know him as ‘maalak’ (owner).
Patil said, “I have no money to treat my ailing mother. Our house is in a dilapidated condition. We do not even have a fan here. But the trust is negligent.”
He has dragged the trust to the Bombay High Court to regain ownership of the temple.
The court had ordered the trust to accommodate him as one of the trustees, but Patil is not satisfied. He wants 25 per cent of the temple’s income. His case is pending.
Trust chairman Subhash Mayekar said, “Patil will not get anything as he has levelled serious allegations against the trustees. He has appealed in court. That is his right.”
The Siddhivinayak temple was built in 1801. Lakshman Vedu Patil, one of the original residents of Mumbai, renovated the temple in November that year. Thereafter his eldest son Sundar maintained the temple. After Sundar’s death, his brothers Tukaram, Manik, and Janu took over the management of the temple. But disputes within the family forced the Patils to hand over the administration to Govindrao Phatak in 1936. Phatak administered the temple until 1973. On December 31, 1973, the Maharashtra government formed a trust to run the temple.
Krishnakumar is Manik’s son. “My grandfather used to light the lamps in the temple till his death,” he said. “He used to take a boat to reach the temple. (Those days there was a lake in the area known as Nardulla Tank). There were four families living near the temple in 1950. All of them were removed from the place.”
t_kiran@dnaindia.net
