From childhood I have been seing pandals put up across most of the streets in the "pearl city" with huge idols of Ganesha (you can find 42 feet ganesh idol in khairatabad pandal which has sort of got the cult status now) Ganesh visarjan again is a done with huge fanfare, with trucks and lorries overflowing with people and the extremely slow traffic in and around the 'Tank Bund'. You go tot experience it!I believe hyderabad comes close second only to Mumbai in celebrating the ganesh utsav.
Since the mid 90's the number of apartments in Hyderabad has grown exponentially and now you would hardly find a residential house in the main areas of the city. It comes as no surprise that most of the apartments have associations in order to solve the issues pertaining to the apartment or just to cling onto the belief of "togetherness". It is imperative then that these apartments also celebrate ganesh utsav every year by putting up a idol in the premises by collecting money from all the flat owners and tenants.
As of now, I have lived in two apartments in Hyderabad. I stayed in the first one for 18 years and in the other one for 4 months(where I am staying now) I was never perturbed about these celebrations, in fact I enjoyed them in my young age when I used to play games and participate in the pooja.I never questioned the celebrations since I enjoyed most of them.
So six days back in my new apartments few kids came up to our flat and asked for donation for the ganesh festival. At first I was happy that such a celebration could happen and help in new tenants and owners to get to know each other. So with a false sense of participation I gave them 200 rupees and to my surprise they did not accept and demanded minimum 500! So the problem solver in me got awakened and I did which most of us would have done, called the higher authorities, in this case my parents!! The problem got sorted out after heated debates, High and low Tea's and what not! So the ganesh utsav without starting already had made sure that there was more collaboration among the flat residents.
So everyday around 8pm they had celebrations in the basement which I could never be a part of because of office schedule which I was thankful to! So while I was coming back to my home in the night I got to see so many apartments celebrating the festival in its full glory by either playing "Tambola" "Dancing" "Musical chairs" and other equally enthralling games. I just asked myself, Is this right? Wasn't this supposed to be regarding Ganesha and not about playing these petty games??(Q) Pat came the reply from alter ego that it is all right since it is helping people get together,something ganesha would be proud of.
I would have had the same feeling for eternity if not for yesterday's developments. In our apartments they had a arrangement where in flat residents bring some food ( one day one flat resident) which would then be distributed as the prasad to all others who had come. The celebrations use to continue till midnight with the sound of tambola numbers haunting me in sleep! But yesterday was different.
Yesterday it was the turn of a resident who stays in one of the rooms in the basement along with the watchman( family of the driver of one of the owner's car) The lady with all her enthusiasm had prepared huge chunk of prasad but to her shock 70% of residents did not turn up for the celebrations! What happened to the sense of togetherness? What happened to pleasing the lord ganesha? What happened to playing the greatest game:-Tambola? Everything was thrown out of the window and unique excuses came into the picture when they were asked why din't they turn up!
All because the food was prepared by a Driver's wife! Then again the same question(Q) popped up in my mind as before, Is this right? Then the enigma was no longer mysterious, I made sense of it. It is never about the god, it is about following a mindless tradition without knowing its very purpose! I am sure there are people who do it in a proper way but most of them do it in the way our apartment does!
Bolo ganesh maharaj ki jai *
* Conditions apply
Since the mid 90's the number of apartments in Hyderabad has grown exponentially and now you would hardly find a residential house in the main areas of the city. It comes as no surprise that most of the apartments have associations in order to solve the issues pertaining to the apartment or just to cling onto the belief of "togetherness". It is imperative then that these apartments also celebrate ganesh utsav every year by putting up a idol in the premises by collecting money from all the flat owners and tenants.
As of now, I have lived in two apartments in Hyderabad. I stayed in the first one for 18 years and in the other one for 4 months(where I am staying now) I was never perturbed about these celebrations, in fact I enjoyed them in my young age when I used to play games and participate in the pooja.I never questioned the celebrations since I enjoyed most of them.
So six days back in my new apartments few kids came up to our flat and asked for donation for the ganesh festival. At first I was happy that such a celebration could happen and help in new tenants and owners to get to know each other. So with a false sense of participation I gave them 200 rupees and to my surprise they did not accept and demanded minimum 500! So the problem solver in me got awakened and I did which most of us would have done, called the higher authorities, in this case my parents!! The problem got sorted out after heated debates, High and low Tea's and what not! So the ganesh utsav without starting already had made sure that there was more collaboration among the flat residents.
So everyday around 8pm they had celebrations in the basement which I could never be a part of because of office schedule which I was thankful to! So while I was coming back to my home in the night I got to see so many apartments celebrating the festival in its full glory by either playing "Tambola" "Dancing" "Musical chairs" and other equally enthralling games. I just asked myself, Is this right? Wasn't this supposed to be regarding Ganesha and not about playing these petty games??(Q) Pat came the reply from alter ego that it is all right since it is helping people get together,something ganesha would be proud of.
I would have had the same feeling for eternity if not for yesterday's developments. In our apartments they had a arrangement where in flat residents bring some food ( one day one flat resident) which would then be distributed as the prasad to all others who had come. The celebrations use to continue till midnight with the sound of tambola numbers haunting me in sleep! But yesterday was different.
Yesterday it was the turn of a resident who stays in one of the rooms in the basement along with the watchman( family of the driver of one of the owner's car) The lady with all her enthusiasm had prepared huge chunk of prasad but to her shock 70% of residents did not turn up for the celebrations! What happened to the sense of togetherness? What happened to pleasing the lord ganesha? What happened to playing the greatest game:-Tambola? Everything was thrown out of the window and unique excuses came into the picture when they were asked why din't they turn up!
All because the food was prepared by a Driver's wife! Then again the same question(Q) popped up in my mind as before, Is this right? Then the enigma was no longer mysterious, I made sense of it. It is never about the god, it is about following a mindless tradition without knowing its very purpose! I am sure there are people who do it in a proper way but most of them do it in the way our apartment does!
Bolo ganesh maharaj ki jai *
* Conditions apply
