Ganpati Bappa... Morya!

This post is entirely dedicated to the amazing festival that is ending today after sweeping through Mumbai for the last 10 days! This festival is the Ganpati festival, celebrating the birthday of the lord Ganesh.

"In Shiv purana it is said that Ganesh was the creation of Goddess Parvati, who breathed life into an image made of clay. She placed the image outside the door while she was bathing and ordered him not to allow anyone to enter. Then her husband Lord Shiva arrived and was refused admission by the doorkeeper. Shiva became furious and severed the head of the idol. Parvathi was very upset over the incident as she considered the idol as her son (manas putra). To make amends Shiva ordered his servant to go and bring the head of the first living being he would meet. The servant saw an elephant, and he at once cut his head and took it to Shiva. Shiva joined the elephant's head to the body of Parvati's son. Thus Ganapathi came in to being."

Thus goes the story behind the idol and the festival is truly crazy in this city (more so than any other in India). It begins on September 15 with the carrying of the idol home. This can mean literally to a private home, to a huge tent built out of wood and tarpaulins, to a temple, etc. This does not simply involve carrying the idol (small ones are made of clay, large are made of plaster of paris) to its home, but requires lots of dancing, singing, drumming, eating of sweets, and general mayhem in the process! Here the idol will sit and be prayed to and celebrated for either 1.5, 3,5,7,or 11 days depending on however long the tradition is for that location (sorry if this is vague, im not completely clear on all the details). On its altar, the idol amasses sweets, money, fruits, incense, and many other offerings during its stay there. It is customary to visit lots of these idols all over the city because each one is unique and elaborate and beautiful! They range in size from tiny palm-sized little elephants to lifesize multiple story-tall gigantic ganeshes!

I spent many hours wandering around seeing Ganpatis over this past week (especially because everyone is eager to show the tourist their special idol) from tiny to the one located at Lalbaugcha Raja which is rumored to be the biggest in Mumbai! In order to visit the temples and get through the cue to see the idol, you either have to be INCREDIBLY patient and devoted (the line was literally 15 hours long!) or you have to know whom to bribe. We went to see the Ganpati at Lalbaug at about 11:30 at night, took cabs becuase of no parking, and managed to sneak in and out taking a total of about 35 minutes!


This second photo is one (not taken by me unfortunately) of the ending of the festival which is just as loud and vibrant as all of the days before combined! For the ending, or the Ganpati Visarjan, the idol is once again removed from its home and carried amongst fanfare and throngs of dancing, singing maniacs to the sea where it is submerged! I do not know how to describe what this is like, but on the visarjan days the traffic is INSANE (imagine trying to drive in New York City while the St. Patricks day parade floats were being transported around the city, ALL over the city...with very few traffic signals) and the beaches are swarmed with people going to immerse their idols. You may wonder, what happens to the idols once they are dumped into the sea? well... the enormous masses of clay and plaster of paris and paint and ornamental jewelry and whatnot remain in the sea until they wash up on the shore and the beach is cleaned up! sorry mother earth.

For the purposes of trying to convey what this festival is like, I realize that I have dulled down the extreme spirituality and devotion to the idol that one sees when visiting them. I am not a very religious person myself, it is difficult to understand the power of idol worship but it is truly amazing to see the devotion that people have to this tradition. One example relates to the visiting of idols as above mentioned, that there were people who waited in line for 15 HOURS to get a 15 second glimpse of the ganpati at Lalbaugcha Raja. Perhaps i am just an impatient American but that shows some kind of devotion to me!

The more profound example of this was on one of my outing with the Bombay Leprosy Project. We were working in Dharavi, Asia's biggest slum, handing out pamphlets about leprosy, putting up posters, and generally trying to get the message out that there is a cure. This area houses more than 1 million people in structures made up of a combination of tarpaulins, scrap wood, corrugated tin where available, rope, and little else. Everywhere you look, you see people, garbage, animals, children taking a shit on the road, flies, cows, mud... and smiles. [I will write more on Dharavi later] It was unbelievable to me that there are people here who have nothing and yet in the midst of this madness you can find some of the most elaborate and enormous Ganpatis of them all! Who crafts them? Where does the money come from? How do they get a truck down the alley to move it in and then out again? I have answers to none of these questions but what I do know, which was clear from seeing them, is that these idols are a source of hope and joy and creative outlet and prayer for so many people (from bollywood babes to Dharavi dwellers). If not the spritual essence of the idol, it was the vibe that I got from the people who love them that sticks with me!

"Ganpati bappa Morya, Agle baras to jaldi aa"
[Father Ganpati, Come again soon next year]