[Perhaps not all that miraculous, but enough
to convince the couple, Farida and Jimmy Balsara, who are not even Hindu. Every
year, along with tens of millions in street festivals across India, they
celebrate the power of Ganesh, the elephant-headed God who has been adopted by
some of the country’s other faiths. The festival is particularly popular in
Mumbai, the megalopolis of 20 million that is India’s industrial and film
capital, where it got started in the 19th century as an anticolonial protest.]
By Geeta Anand
 |
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A
procession with a giant idol of the elephant-headed god Ganesh headed toward
the
coast in Mumbai, India, on Thursday. The statue will be immersed in
the
ocean, marking the final day of the
Ganesh festival.
Credit
Rafiq Maqbool/Associated Press
|
MUMBAI — The couple approached the 14-foot
statue of the god Ganesh on Wednesday, hands folded, believing with all their
hearts in his powers as the one who removes obstacles.
They had seen proof of this two years ago,
they said, when they prayed during the Ganesh festival for their daughter to
become pregnant. The daughter, who lives in Britain, now has a child.
Perhaps not all that miraculous, but enough
to convince the couple, Farida and Jimmy Balsara, who are not even Hindu. Every
year, along with tens of millions in street festivals across India, they
celebrate the power of Ganesh, the elephant-headed God who has been adopted by
some of the country’s other faiths. The festival is particularly popular in
Mumbai, the megalopolis of 20 million that is India’s industrial and film
capital, where it got started in the 19th century as an anticolonial protest.
And so the Balsaras, who, as Parsees, are
followers of the Iranian prophet Zoroaster, are among the crowds who pray for
Ganesh’s blessing. The giant plaster-of-paris statue of Ganesh before them is
the most famous in Khetwadi, one of Mumbai’s oldest, densest neighborhoods,
near where the festival was first celebrated.
Almost every alley features yet another
wildly decorated, ardently worshiped Ganesh. But this one, Khetwadi Cha Ganraj,
or the Ganesh of Khetwadi, often wins awards as the most beautiful. That fame
drew the Balsaras and thousands of others on Wednesday, the last day before the
deity would join about 50,000 other statues across the city in a procession of
dancing crowds to the ocean, where the idols will be gently lowered into the
water.
More than 160,000 Ganesh statues had already
been dropped in the city’s waterways, some just a foot tall and worshiped in
peoples’ homes, others close to 30 feet high, paid for by politicians and
businessmen as centers for worship and merriment during the festival.
Worship of an elephant in the Indian
subcontinent can be traced to about 325 B.C., with Ganesh becoming part of the
Hindu pantheon around the fifth century, and then being absorbed into Buddhism
and Jainism in the ensuing centuries.
In the 17th century, Shivaji, a ruler after
whom Mumbai’s train station and airport are named, spread worship of Ganesh to
the wider population in his kingdom in western India. In the late 19th century,
after the British banned political gatherings, a leader of India’s independence
movement got the idea of spreading nationalist sentiment by organizing a street
festival around Ganesh.
Two followers of that leader, Bal Gangadhar
Tilak, lived in Keshavji Naik Chawl, a housing complex in Mumbai of tiny
three-room apartments along open-air corridors, a common housing design for
middle-class residents at the time, and one still in use today. The Ganesh festival
was started in that chawl in the 1890s.
“The objective was to create an awakening
among the people against British rule,” said Madhukar Keshav Dhavalikar, a
former archaeology professor and former director of Deccan College
Post-Graduate and Research Institute in Pune, India.
The festival spread across the country,
although Mumbai remains its heart and soul. In the same chawl where it all
began in the late 19th century, residents, some of whose families have lived
there for three generations, keep the tradition alive.
They have succeeded in holding onto the
tradition’s low-key origins, centered on cultural activities, even as the
festival has evolved into an ever-noisier competition for the largest, most
beautiful statue.
Despite the surrounding city, the community
has maintained its village feel. On Wednesday, the courtyard in the chawl was
an oasis of calm in the midst of all the urban hustle. Children ran in and out
of the apartments, most of which had their doors wide open; women wearing saris
cooked dinner; and men in shorts napped and watched TV.
“You can just enter anyone’s room,” said
Vinod Satpute, a 58-year-old flight attendant with Air India, whose parents
moved to the chawl decades ago. “It doesn’t matter if he’s eating or sleeping.
That’s his problem.”
A few streets down, vast crowds gathered
around the Khetwadi Cha Ganraj. The first statue went up here in the
neighborhood’s Lane No. 12 in 1959, and this year’s celebration cost close to
$75,000, financed in large part by corporate donations.
The costs cover not just the giant,
elaborately painted and dressed Ganesh, but also the themed room that holds the
deity — this year, a “Rome and Rajasthan palace.” Two huge chandeliers hang
overhead as 12 speakers boom temple music at a deafening volume. A crane holds
a video camera that beams live footage to a smartphone app and to a YouTube
site.
In addition to many flower garlands, this
Ganesh wears a 33-pound necklace of pure gold, the gift of an anonymous donor
in 2008, said Ganesh Mathur, who was among those in charge of the Khetwadi Cha
Ganraj this year.
Along the street, almost every alley has been
transformed into a tent with an enormous Ganesh inside. Crowds throng, buying
cotton candy, toys, tea and watermelon slices, as couples and families make a
day of visiting the idols. Long lines snake around almost every tent, inside of
which crowds gape at the latest iteration of the revered God.
At the Khetwadi Cha Ganraj, it was time for
the evening prayers. As they finished, workers on ladders used peacock feathers
to dust Ganesh’s massive arms and pink fingernails. Then they began replacing
the deity’s many flower garlands with fresh ones.
At that, the Balsaras, until now engaged in
deep prayer at the back of the room, rushed forward and shouted to the
attendants over the temple music that they wanted to take the discarded
garlands home.
Mr. Balsara, 77, and Mrs. Balsara, 64, said
they had not been able to think of any major family or business problem that
needed overcoming, so this year they offered more general prayers, wishing
happiness for everyone.
In minutes, they were weaving their way
through the motorcycles and street vendors outside, arms buried in red and
white flowers, convinced that another great year lay in store for them and for
everyone else.
Ayesha Venkataraman contributed reporting.