Ganpati Bappa Morya!

Another end to another celebration. Truly, every celebration completes!

This year’s Ganesh celebration was more of a breather which brought back some love in my life amidst difficult times. It made me want to be happy like a child again. I remember when I was much younger, I used to live in a joint family and we would have Ganpati home every year. Then we would laugh and sing and dance and celebrate for 10 days and after He was gone, we would really miss Him so much. So a couple of months later, we would do a replay of the festival where one of us (cousins) would become Lord Ganesha and the others would invite people over from the building for darshan. As curious visitors stood before the idol pretending to pray, a ‘modak’ would magically manifest itself in the idol’s hand and that would be the talk of the evening! Of course, on the few occasions that the ‘idol’ couldn’t sit still and needed to scratch, the darshan line would suddenly be stopped under the pretext of a really important secret puja that was being done. Elaborate 'prasad' and yummy 'panchamrut' was served after a rather amusing darshan was over! :)

So this year too we had two Lord Ganeshas…..

The second one chickened out when we took it for visarjan and chose to join the immersion team instead! :)

Being with Yashvi reminds me of how we were all so innocent and happy that nothing really mattered. And now that I am older and walking this path with His Holiness, it feels like I am on a journey back to innocence but one that comes along with strength and maturity. The journey seems really long and I don’t know what awaits me but I am holding on real tight and I know it will complete.

In the meanwhile, here’s to many more celebrations!!

Jai Gurudev!

p.s. This year mom lost her marbles!… she thought she’d give Ganu a sponge bath (yeah, I don’t know what she was thinking!) and then realized it was not such a smart thing to do when the paint on his left cheek started smudging!! Hahaha… moms!!! :)