We seemed to know how much each uncle/aunty would give, which Anna (Bhaiyya) or Akka (Didi) needed a bit of pestering, which house had the most generous adult, and who was the kanjoos. And the cardinal rule: Never ask from your own house. Send your best friend. Your parents will want to make a good impression.

And then the drive would begin. Each day we would take stock to see if we had collected enough money for our very own bit of divinity. And soon a day would arrive when we had enough money.

This is where the adults would come in. Some indulgent uncle from the locality would offer to take one of us to buy the idol, while he was buying one for his own house. And off we would go -a whole bunch of us – one fine morning, all bathed and clean, giggling with excitement to get our very own Ganesha idol, which would be consecrated at the corner of the street for the next ten days or so.

Once the idol was bought (there was never enough money — what with us changing our minds so many times over which idol we wanted — that some parent or the other would chip in with the last few rupees) and properly consecrated at the street corner on a dais that some of the older kids had spent the previous night building out of benches, planks of wood, a study table borrowed on the sly from someone’s house (much to the chagrin of the parents in that house, who knew that their child had bid goodbye to schoolwork for the next 10 days or so), we would all bring out chairs from our own houses, place it before the dais and stare at the idol in a happy trance at a task well accomplished.

Soon, it would be evening and time for the evening pooja. An uncle mostly someone from the locality who was familiar with the rituals would perform the pooja, after which the goodies would be distributed. Often, some family or the other observing the festival would make a “little extra” for the “two-legged monkeys” or “baala illada kothigalu” (monkeys without a tail) (as children were referred to in those politically incorrect days) and somehow this ‘little extra’ was always enough for many of us to go to bed without eating dinner because we were just too full.

Between the evening pooja and bedtime came some of the most exciting evenings of my/our childhood where all rules were broken and curfew time was ignored because evening after evening was spent putting up cultural programmes before indulgent parents who also ignored their regular chores and sat there to watch their kids do mono-acting, mimicry and belt out songs from films.

The high point of each evening was a short play put up by different groups of kids.

Now, what did a bunch of convent-educated, English-speaking, random children know about religion? We just dug deep into the resources we had. The plays would come from fairy tales and comic books. Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel rubbed shoulders with Jataka tales and stories from the Panchatantra, night after night after night for 10 nights. We used our own clothes, borrowed stuff from our parents, neighbours, ransacked wardrobes belonging to friends’ parents, and made pretty clothes to fit princesses, children lost in the woods, evil witches, wise kings, lions, bears, and trees.

And then came the day of the festival. And along with it the most-believed, the dearly held, non-negotiable superstition in the Kingdom of Children. “You see 100 Ganesha idols on Ganesh Chaturthi, you will score 100 marks in Mathematics.” No one knew when and where this belief emerged, but we held on to it for dear life. Who wanted to study when seeing 100 Ganeshas would do the trick?

Early bath, early breakfast, all ready by 9 am, a bunch of kids (again no less than 50) would gather on the street corner and plan out the routes to our 100 marks in Mathematics. The plan would involve dividing ourselves into smaller groups and knocking on random doors to find out if they had a Ganesha idol at home. If the answer was yes, we would barge into the house invited or not and go and take a good look at the idol before bidding goodbye and going to the next house.

That was all. As simple as that. Knock on a door. Ask: Ganesha Koodusiddhiraa? (Have you consecrated the Ganesha at home). And walk in, spend 30 seconds looking at the Elephant God and walk out, with the complete belief that you are one step closer to that elusive 100 percent in maths. If some rare family observing the festival found this either amusing or cute, we would given some sundal or laddoo or modak which we would happily munch as we went to the next house.

We would periodically assemble every two-three hours to take stock of how many Ganeshas we had seen and who was closest to acing the maths exam in the next term.

And then there was the day of the immersion. This was again where adult assistance and supervision was required. An adult would perform the necessary pooja and take the idol to the nearby lake (we had a little lake in the neighbourhood park) for immersion. The less than 10-minute walk would take close to an hour with an adult carrying the idol in his arms and a bunch of kids dancing on the streets like there was no tomorrow. No one would want the festivities to end and one child or the other would request the adult to take a detour and walk through this street or that, until a point when everyone would be tired enough to want to get to the lake. Once at the park, a quick ritual would be performed and the adult would walk into the knee-deep water to immerse the idol while the children stood on the edge a wee bit sad, a wee bit tired, a wee bit happy, and already making plans for the next year.

This was how it was, as far back as I can remember right up to the time I went to college.

And then there was a rath.

And a ride that slashed its way through the heart of India dividing us into religions we did not know, showing us differences we did not feel, breaking us into groups that we never understood, showing us fault lines, we never knew existed – And thereby replacing the India we knew with the India we would have rather not known.

An India we lost, so easily, so casually, so simply that we did not even realize it was gone before it was gone.

(Asma is a sometimes writer, a constant fighter, a disobedient dreamer)

Related:

Give & take, Muslims offer cooperation and understanding: Ganesh Chaturthi & Eid-e-Milad: 2023

My First Lessons in Diversity, the Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations at Mangalore college

O GANESHA! – Part 1

O GANESHA! – Part 2

The post Once Upon an India — reminiscence at Ganesh Chaturthi appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Apart from making me join the ranks of ‘thosewhoareblockedbyfacebook’, causing a lot of outrage among friends and comrades, and giving me ammo for this article, Facebook’s ban also raised a lot of questions in my mind. What is it that I had said that actually merited a ban? Oh yes, I had mocked, yes openly mocked, the #TalktoaMuslim campaign. I had asked if the ‘liberals’ who were running this unbelievably ridiculous campaign equated the Muslims with some exotic animals one spent time with, felt good about, and yes, posted a picture or two on their Facebook/Instagram accounts. Like the day at the zoo, perhaps?

And that, obviously, offended someone enough to block my account. Hurrah!

But come to think of it, did someone in a country like India, with a population of 172 million Muslims, actually think that there was a need for a campaign which was hashtagged #TalktoaMuslim? I mean, like, really?  It is baffling to even imagine that there are real people in this country who have NOT talked to a Muslim? What do they do when they meet Muslims in their schools and colleges, at workplaces, in restaurants, on public transport? They turn away? Don’t talk to them? Pretend they don’t exist? For a campaign like #TalktoaMuslim to have some meaning, any meaning at all, one has to first create conditions where Muslims are alienated enough that they are not spoken to, and then attempts have to be made to ‘’talk to them”. Now, that is how ridiculous this campaign is.

While the campaign in itself is laughable, what it really shows is how disorganized and clueless the liberals in this country are. While the right wing has a clearly chalked out agenda which they have been following for the last 70+ years, and visibly so since 1989, the liberals continue to out of depth with the existing reality. Not only are they lost, but their knee-jerk reactions, of which this campaign is an example, only serves to strengthen the rightwing. What we need in India is a considered, organized and intelligent response from the liberals – by which I mean, both Hindus and Muslims. The saffron agenda cannot be countered with silly hashtags like #TalktoaMuslim and #Notinmyname (yes that one too. Has anyone missed noticing how the lynching has continued unabated and even more brazenly, despite the nation-wide outrage and kilometer long human chains, last year?).

If the liberals really want a campaign, How about #TalktotheHindus? Tell them to stop killing the Muslims. That would be a great help. And, yes, let them eat beef. While at it, tell them to abolish the caste system. Otherwise it would be rather presumptuous of them to speak to anyone about anything, anyway. (Question to self: How does someone with a caste name even pretend to be a liberal?)

It is not as if the liberal Hindus are unaware of what is being done in and to this country for the last three decades. From the day the rath yatra left the Somnath temple in Gujarat in 1990, the rape and murder of Muslims has become a regular affair in the country. History, culture, mythology, folklore, practically everything has been used to gleefully kill, yes, actually kill, rape, and slaughter Muslims. And with unprecedented impunity. Any attempt to question this brazenness is met with incessant trolling, abuse and even murder (Remember Gauri?).

So, dear Hindu liberals, if you do not want to be seen as being complicit to the downfall of one of the greatest democracies in the world (yes, we have the potential) and the conversion of India into an autocratic state, what you need to do is break your own silence.

Fuck #TalktoaMuslim. #TalktotheHindus.

Post Script: As for #TalktoaMuslim. They don’t need you to talk to them. What they need is a talking to, from the liberal Muslims, who can tell them to leave their medieval mindset behind and step into the 21st century. Triple talaq and halala………. really!! And, yes, the damn burqa has to go.

But that is another story, for another day, maybe in more equal times…

Asma is a once-upon-a-time journalist, a sometimes writer, a constant fighter, and a disobedient dreamer.

Courtesy: https://indiaresists.com/
 

The post Blocked after Questioning #TalktoaMuslim: Facebook Community Standards are Communal appeared first on SabrangIndia.