Ganesh Utsav with the Kin

When asked about my favourite festival, my eyes light up with the thought of ethnic Indian wear. How I love raiding the colourful FabIndia stores for the want of kurtis, jewellery and some every day cosmetics. How I adore the kolhapuri chappals that team up with dresses to saris and brighten my look. How I am so concerned with finding just the right pair of earrings for the occasion. Everything adds up to the festivity and brings along a pleasant rush of enthusiasm.

Festivals around the world are bound by families, love and food. And so Ganesh Utsav is no different to the series of celebrations we are involved in each year. Have you heard of moms who listen to rock music with their kids and then gain a strict posture over dirty shoe marks at home? That would be me. Unlikely to remember what festival, what rituals and what’s not to be eaten on a fasting day, would be, crystal clear me. And still, there is something that draws me closer to Ganpati. Honestly, the only religious thing I ever did was to bring home what Lokmankya Tilak so cleverly revived back in the pre-independence era.

At home, we began this beautiful tradition only because of and for me. It helped us come closer, work with busy dedicated hands decorating the assigned corner and chant the lyrical prayers. When we brought the idol home for the first time, it took me back to my Mumbai childhood and created a time travel for me to relive the same moments. With time, I got accustomed to chanting the prayers and improving my Marathi pronunciation for starters. Then I began stepping in the kitchen, once in a year during the festival, shaping the modaks with delicate hands. They looked crooked, they looked earthquake-stricken but tasted great.

With so many festivals and rituals, I kept losing touch due to exams, projects, trekking expeditions, NCC camps, trips with my groupies and so on. Coming home for Ganpati was like finding home again, keeping the spirit of togetherness alive and planning extreme details and successfully executing each one of them. This is the time of the year, when the incense pleases my mind, my pet too joins us sitting upright for the prayers, clueless of what’s happening, I actually get to see and talk to my neighbours and even the slightest flicker of the lamps makes us run to check whether it is out of oil yet! It’s barely for a day and a half but it is long enough to make us home bound with a sense of loss after particular eco-friendly virsarjan we indulge in.

I believe no God is greater than our faith in them, no home is perfect without its members in it and no heart is content without a feeling of family in it. That is what Ganesh utsav is to me.