For most of the year Ganesha sits quietly in a corner of the puja shelf, greeted first in the morning and forgotten once the day's work begins. Then, on the fourth day of the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada, usually in August or September, he arrives as a guest. A new clay image is brought home, and for a day and a half, or five days, or ten, the house arranges itself around him. Lamps are lit twice a day, the aarti is sung at a volume the neighbours can hear, and the kitchen produces sweets in quantities that make sense only if you remember that the guest has an elephant's appetite.
This is Ganesh Chaturthi, also called Vinayaka Chaturthi, and nowhere is it kept with more energy than in Maharashtra, where it is simply the festival of the year. It is at once a home ritual, a street carnival and, as the final immersion shows, a lesson in letting go.
The boy at the door
The best-known birth story comes from the Shiva Purana. Parvati, wanting a guard who would answer to her alone, shaped a boy from the turmeric paste on her body, breathed life into him and set him at the door while she bathed. Shiva came home, found a stranger barring his way, and in the quarrel that followed struck off the boy's head. Parvati's grief shook the worlds. To make amends Shiva sent his attendants, the ganas, to bring the head of the first creature they met, which was an elephant, and set it on the boy's shoulders. He named him Ganapati, lord of the ganas, and granted that he would be worshipped before every other god and at the start of every undertaking.
The day on which this happened is kept as Ganesha's birthday, and the festival is in essence a birthday party: a welcome, a feast, gifts, and a send-off.
Bringing Bappa home
In Maharashtra the image is called Bappa, father, with the affection one uses for a family elder. In the weeks before, families visit the sculptors' sheds to choose a pose and a size, and on Chaturthi the image is carried home with its face covered.
Its place is the makhar, a decorated frame or canopy in the main room. On it the murti is installed in the rite of sthapana. The priest or the head of the family then performs pranapratishtha, literally the establishing of breath, a sequence of mantras by which the clay is invited to become a living presence. From that moment the image is a guest and is treated as one: offered water, a bath, fresh clothes, sandal paste, flowers, incense, a lamp and food, in the sixteen-step sequence called shodashopachara.
Two offerings are particular to Ganesha. The first is durva, the three-bladed grass that grows in every lawn, tied into bundles of twenty-one and placed at his feet. The second is the modak, a dumpling of rice flour filled with coconut and jaggery and steamed until the outside turns translucent. It is Ganesha's favourite food, and twenty-one is the traditional count, matching the grass and the twenty-one names of Ganesha recited with them. Red hibiscus and red sandal paste complete the offering, since red is his colour.
Sukhakarta Dukhaharta
Morning and evening the household gathers for the aarti, the waving of the lamp. In Maharashtra this means one song above all: Sukhakarta Dukhaharta, composed in the seventeenth century by the saint Samarth Ramdas. Its opening lines are known to every Marathi child:
Sukhakarta dukhaharta varta vighnachi,
nurvi purvi prem krupa jayachi.
Giver of joy, remover of sorrow, who clears away obstacles;
whose love and grace are poured out on all.
The refrain, Jai dev jai dev jai Mangalmurti, is sung with bells, cymbals and a drum until the lamp has been waved and the flame passed round for everyone to touch. Then comes the distribution of prasad, the food that was offered. In many homes this is the one time in the year when every member of the family is in the same room at the same hour.
Tilak and the public festival
The Peshwa rulers of Pune honoured Ganesha with state ceremony in the eighteenth century, but the public festival as we know it dates from the 1890s. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the nationalist leader known as Lokmanya, "accepted by the people", saw in Ganesh Chaturthi a way to bring Hindus of every caste together at a time when the British authorities discouraged political gatherings. From 1893 he used his newspaper to promote sarvajanik, public, Ganesh celebrations in Pune, with a shared murti, lectures and a procession to the river.
Today every neighbourhood in Maharashtra has its mandal, the committee that raises funds, builds the pandal (the temporary hall) and commissions a murti that may be several metres tall. The famous ones, such as Lalbaugcha Raja in Mumbai and Dagdusheth Halwai in Pune, draw queues that last for hours. The ten days fill with music, plays and free meals, and people spend whole nights walking from one pandal to the next. The festival has become a form of civic life, which is exactly what Tilak intended.
Visarjan: the farewell
How long Bappa stays depends on family tradition: a day and a half, five days, seven, or the full ten, ending on Anant Chaturdashi, the fourteenth day of the fortnight, when the great public murtis go to the water.
On the last day the murti is lifted from the makhar after a final aarti and carried to a river, lake, sea or tank for visarjan, immersion. For a family Ganapati this may be a quiet walk to the nearest water. For the big mandals it is a procession with drums, dancers, lorries and crowds that stop the city. The cry on every lip is Ganpati Bappa Morya, pudhchya varshi lavkar ya: Ganpati Bappa Morya, come again soon next year. Morya is popularly said to honour Morya Gosavi, a medieval devotee of Ganesha from Chinchwad near Pune.
The moment of immersion is strange and moving. The image that was bathed and fed and sung to for ten days dissolves into water. The clay goes back to the earth, the form goes back to the formless, and the household returns to an empty makhar. Many people weep. The festival builds love for a form precisely so that it can teach the harder love of releasing it.
That lesson depends on the clay. The old murtis were made of shadu, a natural clay that dissolves within hours. In the twentieth century plaster of Paris took over because it is light, cheap and holds detail, but it does not dissolve, and its chemical paints poison the water. Broken images on the beach the morning after have pushed many families and mandals back to clay and natural colours, and to immersion in artificial ponds or a bucket at home, with the water poured on a plant afterwards. None of this dilutes the tradition; it makes sure the clay can return to the earth as it was always meant to.
Why not to look at the moon
A curious rule attaches to the night of Chaturthi: one should not look at the moon. The story told in the Puranas is that Ganesha, riding home after a feast of modaks, fell from his mouse and burst his belly; he bound it up with a serpent and went on, but the moon laughed at the sight. Ganesha cursed him, so that anyone who looked at the moon on this night would suffer a false accusation.
Krishna himself, the story continues, glanced at the moon by accident and was soon accused of stealing the Syamantaka, a jewel belonging to the Yadava noble Satrajit. To clear his name Krishna tracked the jewel into the forest, fought the bear-king Jambavan for it and returned it to its owner. The traditional remedy for anyone who sees the moon by mistake is to listen to or recite this story of the Syamantaka.
Celebrating at home
You do not need a priest or a pandal. Choose a small clay murti, or shape one yourself from clay or turmeric paste. Set it on a clean cloth with a lamp, a few durva blades and some red flowers. Offer a modak or any sweet, say Om Gam Ganapataye Namah a few times, and sing or play Sukhakarta Dukhaharta morning and evening. Invite a neighbour for the aarti. When the time comes, immerse the image in a bowl of water, let it dissolve, and pour the water on a plant. Then say the words everyone says, and mean them: come again soon next year.