Goodbye Ganeshji

Ganesh goes back home today. To wherever he came from. Kailash, where his mum and dad live maybe? And considering that while I write this, he is most evidently going back from Mumbai, he sure should be highly relieved.


All things God and spiritual ring back into silence. None of which you get when Ganesh comes to visit us. There are blaring loudspeakers, there are drums being beaten skinny, there are people chewing bits of banana and strewing them on the roads, dancing while throwing a particularly stubborn powdered colour on everything they can see, and shouting Ganesh related slogans.


I am not anti-celebration. Ganeshji comes to my home too. He is brought in by the men, who mostly chant Ganpati Bappa Morya. And mom and I decorate the pedestal he will sit on and prepare modaks. Aartis happen with fire and tinkling bells four times a day and most cooking is free of onion and garlic. When a day and a half are gone by, we soak our Ganeshji amidst much sentimental sadness over the going of such a cute god. He is put into a bucket of water in our house. Since our Ganesh is made of mud, he dissolves in 1/2 hour and we then drain the water near a tree.


Done. During aarti, we chant Athavashirsh and play some Ganesh bhajans on our PC. No, we do not blast the volume.


So it pisses us all off royally when we have to put up with loud processions and shouting and eve-teasing and being generally harassed. It is especially more pissing off when one of us decides to fall sick during the festival and yet another member of the family has an exam coming up.


When that happens, you wish Ganeshji would individually smack every loud, apparent-follower of his so some peace prevails. So, don't blame me if I feel thrilled that some billboard fell on a bunch of shouting devotees on a significantly clogged road that falls on the route of Visarjan. A route that has been taken off the traffic map for this particular day so an overlarge bunch of drunk and howling people can carry and drown a huge statue of Ganeshji into the sea and thereby pollute the sea further. Sewage and chemical pollution are definitely not enough, eh? Bring on the plaster of Paris.


May Ganeshji similarly liberate more menaces to the society.

Mumbai, Please.

Enough has been said about Mumbai and the bomb blasts it has faced from anti-national forces. Often aided by people who live within its borders. People with no religion to fear or follow, with no morality to hang their burdens on, with no conscience to keep them up at night hearing echoes of the screams that tore through the air.

Enough has been said about the government and its various lacks and follies. The less said, the better.

Enough has been said about the spirit of the Mumbaikar, who, a day after every tragedy, trudges back to work. Not in a show of spirit, but in a state of hopelessless. The living cannot afford a day's worth of salary loss. Those luxuries are for the dead. Don't pity the dead, pity the living. Because the Mumbaikar is in Mumbai for the money.

But nothing has been said yet about how the name Bombay strikes fear deep inside of me. I have always believed words to have an inherent power of their own. Like little fairies, they are expressions to our deepest wants and desires, our deepest strengths and fears, and we pump all that intangible into a word.

Bomb-ay. I wish we would all stop calling it that word. Not because Shiv Sena would be happy, not because Mumbai is more 'traditional' and not because it is official. But because a part of me is screaming that it's living up to its name.