Ganpati Bappa Morya
It’s that time of year. I know people think it’s all about Diwali but between you and me I look forward to Ganesh Chaturthi more. Practically speaking – there’s a higher chance of getting presents around Diwali but I feel genuinely festive more so during Ganesh Chaturthi because I actually know what is going on.
Ganpati Bappa is basically a Marathi brand ambassador, he’s “our guy”, intelligent, good looking, eats good food, it’s pretty impossible not to like him and this is one of those festivals I never really opposed to celebrating. Before this global pandemic hit us I used to watch the festivities happen in India and be thankful I wasn’t lost in a crowd getting trampled over, but I also felt very jealous – every news channel would show crowds overflowing out of Siddhivinayak Temple, traffic coming to a standstill and people screaming, singing and dancing in front of giant sized Ganpati Bappa statues. People were genuinely excited, the only time I see people that excited here is when they are at Glastonbury Festival. Ganesh Chaturthi for me is actually nothing to do with religion, but more so about bringing the family together for something that is unique to our community, something that’s truly special to us.
*For further reading on the matter please refer to the Sanskar blog
Set Up
Children are imperative to the process of setting up the Ganpati Bappa murti, they are good at things like heavy lifting and polishing so this is a time of year which is good practise to train kids to do as they are told while promising them unlimited battatachyi bhaaji (it certainly worked on me). Typically, the night before Ganesh Chaturthi I am sent to the attic to bring down the boxes containing the murti, the weird Christmas decorations and the metal plates, bells, jewellery etc. Then comes the process of cleaning everything. Mind you – everything is actually clean already because we clean everything after putting them back in the boxes from the previous year… yet year after year I end up scrubbing random copper bowls with slimy tamarind. Once the copper is cleaned, I am upgraded to making sandalwood paste; an hour-long process that involves rubbing a small block of sandalwood in circles on a slab of stone (and somehow, I only end up making a teaspoon of the actual paste from all that effort).
Our Ganpati Bappa murti isn’t made of pearl or covered in Swarovski crystals like the ones you see in movies, it’s simple yet tasteful and we cover it with red flowers and a crown. The only decoration I’m not too keen on are the Christmas tinsels that we add – multicoloured flashing lights and tinsel tend to be a regular addition but thankfully over the years we have substituted this with more flowers. The final part of setting up everything for the pooja is the worst for me because since I can remember I was appointed the task of finding twenty-one durvas (three-leaved grass). You cannot imagine how difficult it is to find these especially out in the freezing cold on a small patch of short garden grass. In fact, there was one year I had a eureka moment and decided to pick double leaved grass blades instead and simply split one of them to make it seem like there were three leaves. Genius idea. At least, it was a genius idea until my parents immediately realised what I had done and sent me back outside to find twenty-five this time as punishment.
Finally, everything is set up and baba preps everything else to do the pooja.
Pooja Time
I have to admit, I’m still not clear on what happens during this pooja, when I was little, I had a habit of standing next to baba and watching out of curiosity what was actually going on with all the durvas that I so painstakingly picked.
Baba would always put on a cassette tape which had instructions in Marathi as well as prayers that apparently only he understood – because the man on the cassette would speak as if he was on fast-forward mode.
The only line I could ever follow was “aatha pani ghala, ani deva la namaskar kara”. That was it. I also knew that this meant baba had to drink water from his hand so I would copy him hoping that he would be impressed by me doing the same thing.
I would however stop trying to follow the cassette tape instructions quickly after that and eventually run to the kitchen to see what aai was making and whether it was ready for me to eat.
My younger brother now carries on the tradition of the pooja, I’m not sure I would be able to handle making sandalwood paste, collecting the durvas and learning this extra complicated pooja so I’m glad.
Khoop Thup
When people in the UK think of Indian food they think of garlic naans, butter chicken, and “onion bhaaji” – the standard takeaway stuff that comes in stained plastic tubs from the curry shop down the road, laden with garlic and an obscene amount of red and yellow food colouring. Maharashtrian food could not be further from that (thank the lord) and only the best kind is made during Ganesh Chaturthi. Whenever my aai cooks she has a habit of making the smallest quantities of the best part of a meal (this seems to be a trend for a lot of aais I don’t have a clue why) but during Ganesh Chaturthi she makes limitless amounts of food that we end up eating for the next two weeks. I am NOT complaining though, as I struggle with a severe addiction to batatachyi bhaaji, yellow varan, the noodly kheer (shevyachi kheer) and last but absolutely not least…modaks.
None of these are complete unless each helping has a teaspoon of thup mixed into them and on the first day of Ganesh Chaturthi I hover like a mosquito around aai as she cooks, waiting anxiously to fill up a plate of potential diabetes and scoff for the entire afternoon. The food is so moreish that even after my third helping there is a voice whispering to me, “Go on Natasha…. it’s just one more puri….just one..” and before I know it I’ve eaten thirteen puris. My three stomachs are falling out of my body at this point and I must literally crawl up the stairs before collapsing on my bed and lying on my side so I can breathe before passing out.
Aarti
I forgot to mention that nobody can actually touch food before we sing the aarti – yes Prarambi Vinati and Ramaraksha were not the only long prayers I was taught. The fifteen verse Ganpati aarti is definitely more fun to sing, especially the “Ghalin Lotangan Vandin Charan” bit at the end which is basically a competition of who can sing it the fastest without losing their breath.
The Ganpati aarti is one of those prayers that is an absolute pain to learn when you don’t understand Sanskrit especially as a child when all the other children don’t have to say the words! But as the years pass, it becomes more apparent that it if you are one of the few who know the verses of the aarti, you get to lead it.
There is always that one person who sings the aarti out of tune or does the clap wrong, so when I lead the aarti at home I use this as an opportunity to start singing even faster to throw this person off. I know it’s petty, but it is necessary.
The aarti is followed by all the men doing a very painful looking ceremonious press up and the women do the easy version of that. I have always taken this time to say thank you to Ganpati Bappa and wish for better exam grades.
Guests
Ganesh Chaturthi has always been an excuse to invite every single Maharashtrian we know to the house to celebrate and sing the aarti together. Maharashtrians from remote corners of the UK flock to the house dressed in their very best maushi saris and kurtas, I know I should be happy about seeing people come together for this occasion but the only thing running through my mind at this point is “are there enough modaks for me if everybody else will want to eat them.” There is also a higher chance of more people singing out of tune but ultimately the house does come to life when everybody is there to celebrate something like Ganesh Chaturthi. A very warm and fuzzy feeling starts to take over. Bear in mind – the guests tend to never overstay their welcome, I think it’s because they are fully aware that they are carb-drunk from the food too and desperately need that five-hour nap.
Sneaking Downstairs
After waking up from the five-hour nap I am wide awake and pretty much ready to pull an all-nighter. From the first night of Ganesh Chaturti it genuinely does feel as if there is a god in the house, it feels more secure, it feels warmer, it feels closer, as if the house is blessed. It’s the perfect time to watch a horror movie because I know nothing can scare me. It comes to 1am when everybody else is asleep that I realise I am hungry again;
I want to sneak downstairs to rummage through the fridge and eat that leftover modak before anyone else gets to it. After creeping downstairs, I always open the door to the room where Ganpati Bappa is just to check everything is as it should be. We always leave the fairy lights on around the murti and I’m not sure why, but I always go and say hello to him before sneaking off to the fridge as if I were asking for permission.
I finally get to the kitchen and open the fridge to find a happy modak smiling back at me as if to say “I missed you so much”; after totally demolishing it I slither back upstairs and fall asleep feeling totally satisfied.
Pack Up
I despise this part. It makes me genuinely upset to think that after all that happiness and effort we have to pack him away again. My aai used to try and pacify me by saying Ganpati Bappa has to go back to his mum now because he misses her. Firstly, he’s a god so he can travel by the speed of light to see her and come back immediately. Secondly, why didn’t she just come as well so they could stay longer? I almost get irrational during this day because apart from having no excuse to eat carbs and butter all day anymore, the festive spirit disappears too. We’re back to cleaning everything again and carefully assembling it back in their respective boxes and our beloved Ganpati Bappa murti gets carefully put back into the attic. When I was little, the evening we would pack everything up we would get into our car and drive to Central London. Baba would say that we are going to the river to set Bappa free into the water so he can go home – at this point I was alarmed because I didn’t realise we would be throwing the murti into the river, I’d grown so attached to him. Aai and baba would park up somewhere around Westminster and walk along the pavement to drop something small over the edge of the railing into the River Thames and again I would burst out crying – but curiously enough every year we would unpack the Ganpati Bappa murti again, it would be the same one my parents apparently put back into the river…I realised years later that they were just throwing coconuts into the Thames…
I am not religious – so the question always crops up, “Why do you celebrate and pray when you aren’t religious?” The answer is pretty simple – following Ganesh Chaturthi is nothing to do with praying to a god or keeping to my religion, in fact it is more about bringing the family together. It’s about bringing a whole community together to carry out a certain set of traditions that have been passed down to remember the past and push into the future. Without doing things like this my life will be a bunch of Tuesdays strung together by a job, mum jeans, and Netflix. If I don’t observe Ganesh Chaturthi, I won’t be punished in my next life, nobody will get angry at me, in fact to the majority of people it won’t make a slight bit of difference. But I’ll find myself somewhere down the line going to a friend’s house to celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi, missing my family and missing my memories. The helplessness of that situation will be too painful to bear, and the hopelessness will be worse.
I never thought I would live through a global pandemic; it’s sounds too heavy to even be real and it’s changed the way we would normally celebrate something like this. Isolation from friends and family in India doesn’t make the situation any better; but Ganesh Chaturthi brings back a sense of security and familiarity that we so desperately need during a time of global uncertainty. It gives me hope. It gives me closeness. And most importantly it gives me modaks, and nobody, not even a pandemic can take that away from me.
Ganpati Bappa Morya.
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