Saturday, August 26, 2006

ganapati bappa morya

thats the chant you'd be hearing a lot of if you happened to be in the streets of bombay for the next 10 days. its the annual deity immersion festival that passes for the local version of the rio carnival.
for the duration of the festival the unemployed find useful work as general noise makers. not a job description that requires much of skilled labour.
the bedeceked stages, motifs, themes and grand statues that are put up are rumoured to be financed by some shady underworld criminal or the other. i suppose it makes immense sense to a fugitive from justice and society. you're suddenly a sponsor with a divine celebrity endorsement. if you can't buy your way out of eternal damnation with this, then what gives?
the culmination of the festival is a practice that will find favour with atheists too. theres some irony and a sense of divine justice in the custom of celebrating a god for 10 days every year at the end of which you drag him to the sea, singing and dancing every step of the way, walk him into the water and then watch him drown.

2 comments:

None said...

Hi Nytyn, is this you? If this is you, I've added you to my links. www.aabeirah.blogspot.com. Love, Sitara. :)

Anonymous said...

I liked the atheist bit a lot. How true it is ... that we celebrate the Ganapati's existence for 9 days and force him to drown on the 10th. ... a.