My second Indian festival! Ganesha Chaturthi is celebrated for 10 days. Ganesha the god that removes all of the obstacles from one’s life is brought to everyone’s home for 10 days. Every family and every neighborhood has a Ganesha Idol. Some of the Idols are very extravagant. There was a 9 foot tall Ganesha in my city that had a crown and gloves made from 100% real diamonds and gold! Every Ganesha is also given a shrine that honestly more closely resembles a palace. Every night we do Puja (prayer) to the Ganesha. We chant things in Sanskrit and the whole community gets together. I do not understand most of what happened but it had a very joyful atmosphere. Every day has a different theme and color. Ganesha’s clothes are changed every day from red to blue to green to purple to white to orange. Many women from my society made beautiful Prasads (offerings) from fruit, vegetables and pearls. This festival was started in Maharashtra (the state below mine) during the British rule. The hope behind Ganesha Chaturthi was that if everyone could gather together and pray for the British to stop their rule over India then Ganesha the remover of Obstacles would grant their wish. All that they had to do was pray and at the end of the ten days the entire city gets into the streets to throw over 6,000 Ganesha into the river! No one could give me a clear explanation as to why we throw him in the river but almost nothing has a clear answer in India so I am basically used to that by now. The government has made a rule that the Ganesha idols can only be made from materials that are biodegradable but it is not very well enforced. Many Ganesha idols are made from plaster of paris. Biodegradable or not that is a lot of material to be dumped into the river within 24 hours. This festival is catastrophic for the environment. People burst firecrackers and there is garbage EVERYWHERE! The morning after the festival you could not see the road, and the air was thick with smog because of the masses of gas guzzling trucks carrying the Ganeshas on the road. But if I forget about the effect on the environment which I have a very hard time doing it was wonderful. Every person was on the street celebrating. It is a really powerful atmosphere. People were crying because they had to say goodbye to Ganesha and then there was dancing and food and music and everything else you could imagine. Again I felt very clueless about things but it was a beautiful festival and I am happy to have been a part of it.
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