Ganesh Chaturthi

I was lucky enough to be in Mumbai for the start of the Ganesh Chaturthi (AKA, the ganpati festival), which is widely celebrated for about 11 days in the city. The festival celebrates Ganesha, the elephant headed god, who is the remover of obstacles and generally just a good guy to pray to whenever you want to start a journey or a new business or a new anything. Here are my two favorite Ganesha legends which I learned over the course of being in Mumbai.
 

How Ganesha got his elephant head. Ganesha's mom, the goddess Pavati, wanted to take a bath. So, she posted her son outside and told him not to let anyone in. Along comes the great god Shiva, who apparently was Pavati's husband but not Ganesha's father (I smell a scandal!). Shiva wants to be let in, and is furious when little Ganesha stops him. So, Shiva does what any angry stepfather being prevented from full sexual access to his wife does when defied by a well-meaning youngster--he cut off Ganesha's head. Pavati is understandably pissed off about her son's decapitation and so demands that Shiva find him a new head. Appropriately chagrined, Shiva kills an elephant, takes its head and plants it firmly on Ganesha's body.
 

How Ganesha showed off he was such a smarty pants, AKA every Hindu parent's favorite story. Ganesha and his brother both wanted to get married, and their parents couldn't figure out who should have the honor of getting married off first. So, mom Pavati says, "Which ever of you can encircle the universe first shall get the first bride. Well, Ganesha's brother, who I understand to be your usual athletic bro god, sprints off to circumnavigate the universe, but Ganesha simply walks around his parents 7 times and says, "You are the divine mother and the divine father, the creator of the world, the entire universe." Well, Pavati and Shiva eat this stuff up with a spoon--and gets who gets the first bride!

So what is the ganpeti festival, you ask? Well, various communities around Mumbai, as well as individual households erect shrines to Ganesha, where he is worshipped for 11 days. Hundreds of these public shrines, varying in size and majesty (depending, I guess, on how wealthy the community is) are scattered throughout the city, but the locations are highlighted by rows of lights leading to the shrine. Driving around the city looking for the shrines is actually a lot of fun--like a scavenger hunt with lots of illuminated clues! Some of the more famous Ganesha shrines can get pretty crowded and you have to wait on line to see the statue, so I felt pretty fortunate to be in Mumbai near the beginning of the festival where the lines were still minimal or non-existent. 

[The carnivalesque atmosphere]

These statues, large and small, are blinged out--silks, glitter, rhinestones, flowers, offerings, etc. Also, no Ganesha statue is the same and the artists get quite a lot of leeway in how to depict the god--sometimes Ganesha even takes on the aspect of another god (which, if you're a person totally unversed in Hindu imagry, like me, is totally confusing. The Hindu gods are all associated with various objects and animals, so if you've learned, for example, that Ganesha's vehicle is a mouse (weird, but true) and then all of a sudden you see him riding a tiger, it's like, "What? So, wait, he's taking on the aspect of another god, just for funsies?")

 [You can see how opulent the rooms where some of the idols are kept are as well. This was like being in a throne room!]

 [This is Ganesha, pretending to be some other god]

 [Little Ganesha]

 [This idol had a whole light show going on behind him as well!]

My friends told me that the best part of the ganpeti festival would be the final day where all of the idols get paraded down to the beach in a grand clamor of music and dance, then marched into the water. That's right, apparently, the waters of Mumbai are filled with Ganesha from past festivals who are submersed and left in the ocean. (What an amazing place to go scubadiving, no?)  I unfortunately will miss this final day of the festival since I returned to Delhi, but I did come across a few individual household idols being paraded down to the sea...

 [This is a small "household" procession toward the sea--complete with a flying "crane" throwing out confetti"]

 [Look what just one idol being paraded did to all of the nearby parked cars!]

Now, in the olden days, when all of the idols were made of mud, this seems like a pretty nice, and environmentally-friendly festival. Today, of course, when many of the idols are plastic or some other material, it may not be the most environmentally sustainable practice. However, other than that annoying "OMG, this traditional religious festival has actually become an environmentalist's nightmare" bit, I have to say that the ganpeti festival is totally awesome.