Last Thursday was the start of the ten day long festival of Ganesha Chaturthi. This is a Hindu religious festival celebrating the Hindu god Ganesha. For those of you who do not know Ganesha is the god with an elephant head, but he didn’t start out that way. The story is that Goddess Parvati created Ganesha to be a watchmen in front of her washroom door as she took a bath. When lord Shiva tried to enter and was stopped by Ganesha, Shiva beheaded Ganesh. Once Pavarti explained to Shiva what he had done they searched all of India to find a body facing north to place Ganesha’s face on so that he may live but all they found was an elephant body. So that is the story of how Ganesha came into existence and is depicted as an elephant.
Ganesh Chaturthi is celebrated publicly and privately. Indian families celebrate privately by bring a clay murti or statue/image of Ganesh into their temple and large statues of Ganesh are assembled in public temporary shines or mandapas through out the city. Ganesh is worshiped through out the ten days before he is taken from Indian homes and temporary shrines to a large body of water and submerged. Don’t worry the murtis are eco-friendly and made out of solvable clay. This holiday or series of days devoted to Ganesha have been marked in my family by devout worship or Aarti in the morning but mostly in the evening around 7PM, the time of the gods. One thing that I have noticed recently is how Hindu festivals are celebrated differently among the varying Hindu economic classes. The Indians that make up the majority of India’s population are lower class Hindus and they are the most visible. They typically have darker skin and wear more traditional clothes, women in bright saris and small children adorning the kajhal or eyeliner to ward away evil. This demographic is also the most active in religious practices. They are the group that India is famous for, the large crowds of people celebrating in the street making huge human towers. My family is not in that demographic so we are more detached from the lively celebrations and confined to our personal celebrations in our home temple. Just an interesting difference I’ve noticed that hopefully some people might find intriguing as well!
Our Hindi teacher, Dr. Rajopadhiyay, is extremely light hearted and a little forgetful at times. Either way he is a big picture kind of guy who does not concern himself with the details of day to day life. While planning this outing he was no different from his usual self which turned out to make everything much for fun on our end. I’ll explain. Leading up to Wednesday he requested that we all make arrangements to spend the night in the Daly College hostels/dorms, so all four of us may go out to participate in Ganesha celebrations later in the evening. This was about all the information we had until Wednesday at 9:00PM when our bus pulled into a market parking lot. We had no idea what “Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations” would entail, but we did know that if it was similar to any other outing we had gone on with our school it would be fun and make for an interesting story. So there we were in a random parking lot walking into the center of an unknown market in downtown Indore, of course inviting stares where ever we went. We were soon swallowed by loud music as we approached what appeared to be the market square. We had walked into a enormous “Ganesh Chaturthi celebration”. There really is no better way to explain it. There were two stages one with a large 13-ish foot tall statue of Ganesh and another with musicians and life music. The square was filled with (I’m bad at guessing numbers) around 300-400 people, mostly women and children, crowding towards the two stages. There were several Indians that seemed to be MCing on the main stage with Ganesh and dishing out prizes for some sort of raffle. My fellow Americans and I were more than content standing in the back observing the activities but we didn’t get to for long before we were noticed by the majority of the crowd and called onto stage. We removed our shoes, climbed on stage, and proceeded to offer a stage presence that had no logical meaning from my point of view. We stood on the stage helped hand out some prizes for the raffle, took several selfies with excited random people, and posed for more pictures for the local press. We were all very hot commodities being pulled in multiple directions by many eager hands. It was sort of an adrenaline rush being the center of attention for 300 people, being pulled in many different directions.
There were several times when I looked over and Liam or Lauren with a look of “what is going on, this is crazy but I love it”. That look was exchanged at a much higher frequency when Kali, one of the most fierce Indian spirits came out. Kali holds a lot of meaning for different people. I’ve gotten a lot of varying explanations about who she is from different people. The most common being that she is the the destroyer, destroyer or all things evil and is sometimes associated with death. An interesting thing about Kali was that her actor was a male! Maybe he was the only volunteer to have his whole body painted or it just happened that way, but it was definitely interesting to see. For the sake of describing the situation and remaining authentic to Indian beliefs I will just refer to Kali as she. Kali was crazy not only in her performance but in her appearance with black skin, long black hair, blue lips, glitter everywhere, and a long protruding rubber tongue. The whole crowd went wild when she started performing. She carried with her a small hand held bowl of fire that she danced with and did multiple dangerous looking tricks.
In midst of all the craziness and dancing we managed to get a few pictures with Kali, but the crowd started to get too into the performance and that was when Dr. Raj decided it was time for us to head out to our next destination. Leaving the stage was much harder than walking to it. There were several adorable little ones shouting, “didi didi didi!!” (means older sister in Hindi and used to address your younger female elders if you are a child). As soon as I stepped down and reached out my hand my whole arm was swallowed followed by my whole body into the eager crowd of mothers, children and babies. Everyone wanted to shake my hand, take a selfie with me, and welcome me to India. These types of situations are always a little confusing for me. I want to stay there for hours and talk to everyone and love on all the little bacche (children), but it is not totally safe to stay in such a large crowd where people are pulling at you in all directions. I’ve been in similar situations in Haiti, Panama, and Nicaragua before as well and every time the best thing to do, especially for a white female like myself, is to gracefully make a swift exit for an area with a much smaller crowd. After I eventually found my converse and slid them a quarter of the way on my feet we were snaking out way out of that bazaar back to our bus.
Our next destination was to a temple called Ayodhya ka Raja. As we approached I recognized our surroundings a little and noted that we were somewhere in downtown Indore near La Bagh palace, a palace we had visited with Dr. Raj a month or so before. This temple looked very similar to many other Hindu temples: big, white, with intricate carving and domes capped with golden/orange spikes. There was a huge crowd of over 1,000 (again estimating here) people watching traditional dancing performances, one act plays, and waiting to enter the temple for their view of the 25-30ish foot Ganesha. Again I cannot explain how beautiful this temple was. It was one of, if not the largest Hindu temple I had seen yet and as I approached it I began to see what made it so unique. The temple was constructed of fabric and styrofoam. Isn’t that wild!? I later discovered that this temple is constructed to resemble a temple in Gujarat leading up to Ganesh Chaturthi and stands for the 10 days hosting performances and large gatherings until it is taken down 10 days later! (Sorry about the repetitive 10 day thing I am still not over it, obviously)
These two visits were both so different yet tied by the same motivation of Hindu worship. The lack of permanence that is emphasized in this religion is so crazy and it gives you a lot to think about in any context. India is famous for its many festivals through out the year and although I hope to experience all of them I know I’m missing out on so many. I am mainly experiencing Hindu religious festivals because my family is Hindu and even though they make up 80% of the population there is still the 13% Muslim and remaining 7% of varied practices that are represented here. For example this past week was not a Hindu religious festival but also Bakra Eid an important Muslim festival that involves the slaughter of a goat.
Ganesh Chaturthi is celebrated publicly and privately. Indian families celebrate privately by bring a clay murti or statue/image of Ganesh into their temple and large statues of Ganesh are assembled in public temporary shines or mandapas through out the city. Ganesh is worshiped through out the ten days before he is taken from Indian homes and temporary shrines to a large body of water and submerged. Don’t worry the murtis are eco-friendly and made out of solvable clay. This holiday or series of days devoted to Ganesha have been marked in my family by devout worship or Aarti in the morning but mostly in the evening around 7PM, the time of the gods. One thing that I have noticed recently is how Hindu festivals are celebrated differently among the varying Hindu economic classes. The Indians that make up the majority of India’s population are lower class Hindus and they are the most visible. They typically have darker skin and wear more traditional clothes, women in bright saris and small children adorning the kajhal or eyeliner to ward away evil. This demographic is also the most active in religious practices. They are the group that India is famous for, the large crowds of people celebrating in the street making huge human towers. My family is not in that demographic so we are more detached from the lively celebrations and confined to our personal celebrations in our home temple. Just an interesting difference I’ve noticed that hopefully some people might find intriguing as well!
Our Hindi teacher, Dr. Rajopadhiyay, is extremely light hearted and a little forgetful at times. Either way he is a big picture kind of guy who does not concern himself with the details of day to day life. While planning this outing he was no different from his usual self which turned out to make everything much for fun on our end. I’ll explain. Leading up to Wednesday he requested that we all make arrangements to spend the night in the Daly College hostels/dorms, so all four of us may go out to participate in Ganesha celebrations later in the evening. This was about all the information we had until Wednesday at 9:00PM when our bus pulled into a market parking lot. We had no idea what “Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations” would entail, but we did know that if it was similar to any other outing we had gone on with our school it would be fun and make for an interesting story. So there we were in a random parking lot walking into the center of an unknown market in downtown Indore, of course inviting stares where ever we went. We were soon swallowed by loud music as we approached what appeared to be the market square. We had walked into a enormous “Ganesh Chaturthi celebration”. There really is no better way to explain it. There were two stages one with a large 13-ish foot tall statue of Ganesh and another with musicians and life music. The square was filled with (I’m bad at guessing numbers) around 300-400 people, mostly women and children, crowding towards the two stages. There were several Indians that seemed to be MCing on the main stage with Ganesh and dishing out prizes for some sort of raffle. My fellow Americans and I were more than content standing in the back observing the activities but we didn’t get to for long before we were noticed by the majority of the crowd and called onto stage. We removed our shoes, climbed on stage, and proceeded to offer a stage presence that had no logical meaning from my point of view. We stood on the stage helped hand out some prizes for the raffle, took several selfies with excited random people, and posed for more pictures for the local press. We were all very hot commodities being pulled in multiple directions by many eager hands. It was sort of an adrenaline rush being the center of attention for 300 people, being pulled in many different directions.
There were several times when I looked over and Liam or Lauren with a look of “what is going on, this is crazy but I love it”. That look was exchanged at a much higher frequency when Kali, one of the most fierce Indian spirits came out. Kali holds a lot of meaning for different people. I’ve gotten a lot of varying explanations about who she is from different people. The most common being that she is the the destroyer, destroyer or all things evil and is sometimes associated with death. An interesting thing about Kali was that her actor was a male! Maybe he was the only volunteer to have his whole body painted or it just happened that way, but it was definitely interesting to see. For the sake of describing the situation and remaining authentic to Indian beliefs I will just refer to Kali as she. Kali was crazy not only in her performance but in her appearance with black skin, long black hair, blue lips, glitter everywhere, and a long protruding rubber tongue. The whole crowd went wild when she started performing. She carried with her a small hand held bowl of fire that she danced with and did multiple dangerous looking tricks.
In midst of all the craziness and dancing we managed to get a few pictures with Kali, but the crowd started to get too into the performance and that was when Dr. Raj decided it was time for us to head out to our next destination. Leaving the stage was much harder than walking to it. There were several adorable little ones shouting, “didi didi didi!!” (means older sister in Hindi and used to address your younger female elders if you are a child). As soon as I stepped down and reached out my hand my whole arm was swallowed followed by my whole body into the eager crowd of mothers, children and babies. Everyone wanted to shake my hand, take a selfie with me, and welcome me to India. These types of situations are always a little confusing for me. I want to stay there for hours and talk to everyone and love on all the little bacche (children), but it is not totally safe to stay in such a large crowd where people are pulling at you in all directions. I’ve been in similar situations in Haiti, Panama, and Nicaragua before as well and every time the best thing to do, especially for a white female like myself, is to gracefully make a swift exit for an area with a much smaller crowd. After I eventually found my converse and slid them a quarter of the way on my feet we were snaking out way out of that bazaar back to our bus.
Our next destination was to a temple called Ayodhya ka Raja. As we approached I recognized our surroundings a little and noted that we were somewhere in downtown Indore near La Bagh palace, a palace we had visited with Dr. Raj a month or so before. This temple looked very similar to many other Hindu temples: big, white, with intricate carving and domes capped with golden/orange spikes. There was a huge crowd of over 1,000 (again estimating here) people watching traditional dancing performances, one act plays, and waiting to enter the temple for their view of the 25-30ish foot Ganesha. Again I cannot explain how beautiful this temple was. It was one of, if not the largest Hindu temple I had seen yet and as I approached it I began to see what made it so unique. The temple was constructed of fabric and styrofoam. Isn’t that wild!? I later discovered that this temple is constructed to resemble a temple in Gujarat leading up to Ganesh Chaturthi and stands for the 10 days hosting performances and large gatherings until it is taken down 10 days later! (Sorry about the repetitive 10 day thing I am still not over it, obviously)
These two visits were both so different yet tied by the same motivation of Hindu worship. The lack of permanence that is emphasized in this religion is so crazy and it gives you a lot to think about in any context. India is famous for its many festivals through out the year and although I hope to experience all of them I know I’m missing out on so many. I am mainly experiencing Hindu religious festivals because my family is Hindu and even though they make up 80% of the population there is still the 13% Muslim and remaining 7% of varied practices that are represented here. For example this past week was not a Hindu religious festival but also Bakra Eid an important Muslim festival that involves the slaughter of a goat.