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| My little Ganesha |
Here in India we are now celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi. Ganesha is one of the most widely known Hindu Gods, easily recognizable with its elephant head. The festival starts with people bringing a clay idol of Ganesha to their home or community. This first day you see people driving around town with their Ganesha, some larger than others. Families that can afford it have their own Ganesha, while others share one with their society. They even have one in the “slum area” across the road from my apartment. Yesterday they were singing and playing as well as praying to Ganesha all evening, so much fun to listen to and also very lively.
This Ganesha is prayed to for some days before the ritual is to immerse it into a lake/river/sea. This can either happen at the 3rd, 5th, 7th or 11th day. The lake Powai, very close to my apartment has already set up a stage and everything for this happening so I am very much looking forward to it!
I have also invested in a Ganesha, though this one is apparently one of those you keep throughout the year and don’t drown…So guess I will just leave it in my apartment.
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| Me and the Indian family's Ganesha |
The first day of Ganesha, I was lucky enough to visit an Indian family and see their Ganesha and receive his blessings. This was amazing to experience! We said our prayers and got Ganeshas blessings together with the family (I have a photo of their Ganesha posted here). Afterwards we also got served traditional Indian dinner and colorful festival sweets, mmm. Just fantastic! I love my Indian food and sweets J
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| Mmm, Indian home cooking |
After the visit to his family’s home, Ashutosh showed us the large Ganesha they had in his street, amazing! He also took us to see another Ganesha, which was inside an enormous fake built up cave. We walked in this narrow walkway inside the cave and suddenly these brightly lit larger rooms opened up to us and showed different Gods, the last one being Ganesha. This was really nice J Felt a bit claustrophobic inside the cave at times (thinking that if this was average Indian quality, it might not be very stable), but the fantastic views that met us when we entered the rooms where the God’s were made me forget all about it!
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| Large Ganesha |
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| Beautiful Ganesha in the cave |
Tomorrow, I think the plan is to visit Lalbaug, which is the centre for the festival here in Mumbai and also has the largest Ganesha! Looking forward to that J
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