chartandwaters

Apologies if I butchered the spelling of this very popular 2 or 3 day (depending on who you ask) festival starting on Ganesh's birthday, September 7. His name is pronounced "Ganesha" here so I'm not sure why the dropped a in most spellings. Everyone loves the mighty Ganesha, who represents wisdom and wealth and is sometimes depicted as an older elephant, and sometimes as a baby elephant with candy in his hand. Celebrators buy a little Ganesh--the most common ones are brightly painted plaster--and set up a puja offering to him (that first image is Venkatesh's puja offering), do puja (prayer) in the a.m., cook special delicious "festival food" all day and receive guests....then in the evening have a second puja and take the Ganesh to a water tank or water body to throw him in. This symbolizes, as someone put it to me, making a "new" god--giving rebirth to him--and at the same time creating for one's self a new self. (This has caused some environmental damage because the materials used to paint most Ganeshas are chemical.) Some people pay others to throw in their Ganesh.

Several days later, in the French province of Pondicherry, we watched a group of boys who had collected Ganeshas from houses cart them to the ocean for throwing. Figure 2. In Figure 3, you see them throwing the Ganeshas enthusiastically in.

People who have lost a family member that year celebrate no festivals for the whole year.