Ganapati (part 1)

August 29th was the first full day of the Ganapati Festival, which is a Hindu festival celebrating the god Ganesha (who is also known as Ganapati), who is known as a remover of obstacles and the patron of intellect (and thus is popular in Pune, with it's large number of universities). Ganesha is also one of the most recognizable of the gods because he has the head of an elephant, and is very popular in both northern and southern India. The festival was revived to its current form (as my host brother Aditya explained while we ate breakfast made by his uncle, a local celebrity chef, at Rassa Roadies) by Lokmanya Tilak. In 1893, in response to British prohibitions of large gatherings of people for non-religious purposes, Tilak began promoting the festival as a time for people to come together...and exchange information that would be useful in resisting the British.

Now, it's a very public religious holiday. People set up Mandirs (temples or shrines) in the roads with Ganesha idols, and accompany the idols with statues of related figures, political events, changing lights, and even psychedelic music. (It sounds a lot like a rave near a lot of the Mandirs, to be honest.) They also make loads of sweets, because Ganesh loves being offered sweets (ask Genevieve if there can ever be such a thing as too many sweets). The celebration's length depends on the individual family, and can be anywhere from a day and a half to 21 days in length, with most people celebrating five or ten days. My host family celebrates for a day and a half.

A Ganapati shrine at my host brother's fiance's house

In the morning of September 2nd, I went with my host father and brother to go get the Ganesh idol. Traditionally one would walk barefoot, but we went barefoot in the car, which is a good balance of tradition and modernity to my mind. When we acquired the idol, which was small and made of environmentally friendly materials, we had to cover it with a sheet in order to (as I was told) prevent Ganesh from seeing the way back home and being tempted to go home rather than be a visitor in our house.

My host family's shrine

Upon arriving home, my host brother brought the idol to the doorway and my host mother gave us all tika, washed our feet in water in milk, and made circles with an oil lamp, in order to make Ganesh-ji feel welcomed. Then my host family, and one neighbor, decorated or presented the idol with flowers, plants (including basil, which is apparently a great medicine), fruits, and sweets (including modak, which is a coconut sweet). After a bit of the family singing in Marathi and me clapping some cymbals, that was the end of that day's celebrations.
It's quite strange celebrating religious festivals in India as a non-Hindu Indian-American, because there's the assumption that since my family is Hindu and I have a Hindu name that I'll at least go through the motions with people, but because I'm Christian instead I feel very uncomfortable profession devotion for gods I don't believe in. So it was a bit of a balancing act to only participate in the parts of the festival I was comfortable with (like dancing with people) while avoiding the parts I wasn't comfortable with (like declaring praises to Ganesh). The nice thing about Indian attitudes toward religion, though, is that everyone more or less picks and chooses what parts to do anyway, so it's not usually offensive to not do all the rituals that a specific family does.

My host family worshipping

The next afternoon, in order to allow Ganesh to return home, the family submerged the idol in a bucket of water, in which it dissolved. Traditionally, this was done by submerging the idol into the river, but the number of idols is such that it recently has become a pollution problem. Instead, some families immerse at home while others still walk to the river, but immerse their idols in large tanks set up by various different groups so the dissolved idols could be recycled. There also are some idols made from plaster of Paris which do not dissolve, but those have been phased out recently in order to prevent even more additions to India's unrecyclable trash problems. Throughout the next week and a half, though, lots of people were traveling through the streets to immerse their idols, so the festive mood continued even if my host family's participation was over.

The Ganapati idol after immersion

About a week later (September 3rd), people from the program were invited to another person's house to celebrate Gowri, which happens in the middle of the Ganapati festival when Ganesh's sisters come to visit. The shrine for the festival was absolutely gorgeous, and had everything from balancing birds to small fans to real fruit to fake fruit.

The Gowri shrine

From the program, Genevieve, Ryan, AJ, Sarah, Rachel, Zane, Uttara and I all went. We got to meet the family, which had several high-school-aged kids but was mostly people in my parents' and grandparents' generation. One of the people in the family was named Sanjay, which is cool because I think that was the first time I met someone I shared a name with (more or less). After we appreciated the shrine they gave us lots of sweets (so many sweets, more sweets than we could handle) and tea. It was a very nice evening. This was the last Ganapati celebrating I did prior to the last day, which I will discuss in my next post.

 

 

 

 

Another सन्जय

For all of you readers: Have you ever celebrated a religious occasion for a religion you don't follow? How did you negotiate that?