“Ganapati Bappa Moriya”

It is a common practice to undertake any new activity by invoking Lord Ganesha. Keeping with this tradition, here is my first blog dedicated to him.
Long gone are the days when festivals in India were a time for families to spend quality time with friends and relatives, a time when children understood the significance of the customs and practices followed in their religion, a time when people sought the blessings of the elderly and the Almighty. Today, festivals are reduced to times when you get to view the best programmes on TV with your favourite stars visiting your drawing room, a time to demonstrate your buying capacity, a time to flaunt your latest wares, a break from your daily grind and not to forget, a time when you observe rituals more for the heck of it than the love for it. I would like to illustrate the same with an experience that was bestowed upon me during Ganesh Chaturthi this year.
As always, I had been to Ulsoor Lake on the evening of Ganesh Chaturthi to bid goodbye to the Lord whom I had brought home that morning after some hard bargaining. With the morning papers carrying advertisements of the City Corporation giving instructions regarding idol immersion and the arrangements that were claimed to be made for the same, I thought I would be able to give a honorable sendoff to my Good Lord. On reaching the venue where thousands of people had assembled, I found idols that were probably revered a few hours back as Gods being dumped on the roadside and to make things worse, people were virtually walking over them. I always believed that it was the human body that was made of dust and will finally be converted into that form but I realized that God was no exception. To add to all this, the saffron headband clad disciples of the Lord who appeared to have treated themselves to a generous dosage of ‘heavenly drinks’, kept swaying to the tunes of the latest item numbers chanting ‘Ganesha Bappa Moriya’ and bumping into anything that resembled a female.
Having witnessed all this and escaping a near stampede, I managed to get to the the edge of the lake where young boys on the other side of the protective grill were helping God reach his final destination. I was in for a surprise here too as the immersion of the idol was dependent on the amount that the Bhakta was ready to shell out for his God’s sake. A twenty rupee note would mean that the kid would handle the idol with care and immerse it in the lake with utmost devotion while anything less than that would mean that God would have to perform a bungee jump right into the lake.
God would have felt more honorable if I had immersed him in a bucket in my house and used that for watering my plants.
It aches to see such acts being performed in the name of religion. This festival, conceived with the notion of fostering communal harmony and building a sense of social bonding has now turned into a festival where the local hooligans pester households for donations weeks ahead, blast loud music, block all roads with pandals and indulge in drunken revelry.
What else can I say but “Ganapati Bappa Moriya”