The town before the season finds it
Pen does not announce itself. Arriving by road from Mumbai, about two hours through the Khopoli exit on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, then a state highway that narrows as it goes, you pass rice fields and small dhabas before the first workshop appears on your left, its open frontage stacked with half-finished figures drying in rows. By February, the workshops are already running. By May, they are relentless. The Ganesh Chaturthi season is months away, but the idols do not wait for urgency.
