An Unforgettable Ganesh Chaturthi!

This year’s Ganesh Chaturthi was indeed special!

Since two years, our apartment complex has been playing host to the Lord Ganesha. A group of boys in the colony and their friends look after all the arrangements – right from collecting funds, to bringing the Ganesha and ensuring daily worship.

For one whole week, the evenings went by in attending the Pooja, availing the delicious Prasad offerings and meeting people from the apartment and the lane as well. Some new acquaintances were formed while existing friendships blossomed even more. After a long while, the lane reverberated with the sounds of children playing and having fun.

It was a wonderful week – a time to dress up, meet people and strengthen the bonds of a budding community!

I started this blog by saying that this year’s festival was special. There’s an interesting story about it.

The day when Ganesha is brought home, or to the pandal, is a very special day for me. I have fond memories of rushing out of my home whenever the chants of ‘Ganpati Bappa Morya!’ would resonate in the building where my childhood home used to be. The Dhol-Tasha, the devotion and ecstasy of the people made it one unforgettable affair. The eve of Ganesh Chaturthi festival always makes me nostalgic, reminding me of my hometown in Maharashtra where the idols would be brought with great pomp and splendor. I usually post a note in my FB profile in memory of welcoming Ganpati Bappa in my hometown.

I posted a note this year too but saw it garnering some negative comments. I deleted my post, because the memories of Ganesh Chaturthi are too precious for me to subject them to unwanted and unnecessary ridicule and negative comments. This incident somewhat dampened my mood.

But then I also learnt a valuable lesson. FB is a great platform for meeting people and forming online communities. But during festive times, it has been attracting a host of negative comments of late. All the festivals that made my childhood awesome are now being examined and scrutinized in a new light. I am all for moving with the world but not at the cost of everything that I have stood for all my life. So I (yet again) uninstalled my FB app from my mobile. Yet again, because I had uninstalled it once but had to reinstall it last month when I joined an online writing challenge, so as to not to miss any updates.

I resorted to the good old newspaper and boy, I tell you, it described the festive activities in the way they should be! Whole pages filled with beautiful idols of Ganesha, images of flower markets that presented a beautiful panorama with all the multi-colored flowers that were being sold there, shops and pandals being decorated… this is what a festival is about, and this is how it should be perceived! This greatly uplifted my spirits. Ganpati Bappa showed me the right way to welcome Him, which is the good old-fashioned way!

The boys who looked after the arrangements for this year’s Ganesha festival are in their teens. Most of them come from very humble families. Seeing their determination and enthusiasm in conducting all the activities, I couldn’t help think about the posts I saw in FB which stated that for most people, Ganesh festival has become something to be recorded in their mobiles or posted about. I am just grateful that in this hi-tech and advanced generation of gadgets and technology, there are still people who are keeping up this tradition of Ganesh festival, alive and thriving. It gives me hope for all the coming generations. I am grateful that there are people who arrange for the festive activities, and that there are people who participate whole-heartedly in the same, with or without their mobiles. I think it is high time we accepted the fact that mobile will always be a part of our lives. Now we only need to ensure that we live as much in the real lives as we do in our virtual lives.

Bappa favored me twice this year – once, by giving an opportunity to present some offerings to Him as Prasad, and second time, by blessing me with the opportunity to dance during His visarjan! I have often watched the procession of Ganesh idols from my home in Dombivli longing to join the people dancing blissfully. I could never dance in any procession while I lived in Maharashtra but for the first time, in my 44^th year, I finally got a chance to dance during the visarjan ceremony of the Ganesha idol of our apartment complex. I can’t express what an enthralling experience it was to finally see a dearly-held dream come true!

Ganesha will always be about small daily miracles that reinforce our faith in the goodness of life. He will always be a reminder to live life as a celebration and to spread happiness among people. He will always be the one bringing people together as a community. The world is changing, but the change will never bypass the devotion and ecstasy of the devotees who are keeping up the ages-old tradition of welcoming Bappa in the way He should be welcomed.

Thank you Bappa for an amazing festive week! Until we meet again next year!