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| The GSB ganeshotsav mandal. |
So the Ganapati fever is back again!! Year and year we chant "Ganapati bappa morya, pudhchya varshi lavkar ya" & the elephant headed god never disappoints us & graces us with his presence every single year.Every year 1000's of Ganesh pandals are set up bringing together people from all parts of the country.
The earliest memory I have ever had of Ganesh chaturti is going out with my family-dad,mom,gran & bro-to the GSB seva mandal,which is our caste Ganapti pandal. I remember I used to look out for this time of the year very eagerly, though not for the love of god, rather more for the fun I used to have with my brother and cousins at the mandal (yeah what did you expect? I was a kid :p). Mom used to dress me up in all my finery, ghagra choli, flowers & the likes, which since I had no fashion sense at the time (& don't even get me started on my moms fashion sense) was really terrible. It still pains me when I remember those childhood fashion deprived years. We used to set out early in the morning, hire a cab & after a 2 hour journey (which I used to spend sleeping on my moms lap or hitting and pinching my brother), reach the pandal. The moment we would set foot out of the cab, I'd start eating my mom's brains out asking about my cousins whereabouts (I really pity her, its not like she had an inbuilt GPS system just to answer my questions :p). Then would start our big family marathon to deposit our footwear at the pay & deposit stalls ( I always used to enjoy this since I got a chance to jostle my bro and pin it on the crowd surrounding us & cry to mummy if he did anything about it :p). Since we were konkani we used to get first preference during entrance without having to stand in line. That always made me feel important like my dad was some rich political honcho or something (the imaginations of a kid, tch tch). Then would start the impossible task of locating our extended family. After half an hour of frantic searching & another of frantic calling we would finally locate them. But no the search wouldn't end there, that was only half the job. The main problem was locating good seats. Mom & dad being mom and dad ( that is old people) always wanted to sit in the front while we being kids wanted to sit in the back that is nearer to the food stalls. The food stalls held the most appeal to me. The smell of the hot bhajias, the Chinese noodles n soups, the batata vadas, popcorn would make my stomach churn with hunger. I was more interested in these food stuffs than eating the prasad lunch (which was always served too late for me to hold on to my hunger,and this by the way was the very excuse I always gave my mom). And luckily I had my partner in crime, my brother who was three times my size & so worse than I was :p It also helped a lot when my cousins and me would start banging our feet & throw a fit when our parents refused to give in to our demands. So in the end they didn't have any other option then to relent to our demands or face public humiliation (courtesy us :D). Then would come the praying to god part. In my innocent childish mind I held god as a distant mighty figure, whom my mother always used to tell me to pray lest bad things started happening to me. That reason in itself was enough to get me to pray to god. None other required. Not like now when I have at least 10 favors to ask from god, from good marks & my desired phone to my crush giving me the light of the day, or a good future husband (kidding...really!) & ending with a better life for everyone as an afterthought, lest god think that am selfish or something. After the praying would come the prasad lunch and my moms frantic efforts of getting me to eat. It probably never crossed her mind( or maybe it did) that my eating all the bhajias had a huge hand in my hardly eating the prasad. But then I hardly cared since mom would always eat the leftovers, saying we should never waste food as god doesn't like it & I always got off with a mild reprimand. This was followed by the bidding of teary goodbyes (among the elders) & hurried punches (among us, lest our parents caught us actually doing it). Then the 2 hour cab ride back home with me again sleeping on my moms lap. Those were the wonder days!
As years went by things changed, our rituals changed. Fewer & fewer attendees followed by change of timings and priorities. I still go to the pandal with my family but without my bro, who never gets an off from work and whom I miss terribly, especially on such occasions as am left without my partner in crime. I still sleep in the cab sometimes but am left with no one to pinch or irritate, & left to my own devices I find refuge in my phone's e-reader as usual. Eating in the stalls isn't fun anymore, not without my brother & the degraded quality of food, which was never really high class in the first place, doesn't help either. Plus nowadays I am so used to eating out with my friends that the bout of independence I used to feel when I & my brother would go to buy in the stalls with the meager amount of money that dad used to give us, doesn't hold the same charm to me anymore. I still pray to god, but now my prayers are leaded with fear and awe and the realization that this is the almighty being who holds a key to my future. There's not a pint of the old childish innocence left. I have a 100 favors to ask and a thousand thoughts in my mind to distract me. From damn my odhni is slipping, to oh that guy there is really cute and when is this thing going to end so I can get back to my books, the thoughts never end. The favors are likewise from god please clear me with first class,I'll definitely study hard next time, I'll even give up non veg food for 3 months and I know I haven't been a good kid, but just this once make mom to agree with me & what not, you get the gist. Like I said, with maturity, priorities & thought processes change. We start caring more about what the people around us are thinking & we start enjoying lesser and lesser. Our demands to god increase and so does the devotion. With all that's been said and written here by me, I really still do like going to Ganapati with my family but lesser and lesser so and I know and fear that one day its going to stop all-together. Its inevitable. Its either going to be my work or something else equally important and fickle at the same time. I just wish some things would never change. Life would be so much more better, wouldn't it? Wishful thinking...sigh...
