We're going to back track a little, well...a lot, and do a few posts in a row. So, our last blog was about our yoga course. Yoga rocks. It's been challenging to practice while traveling, but every day is a new day and if we don't have time one day, we'll just try our best the next day!
After the yoga course, we spent a few more days in Mumbai with our friend Anshul, Roxanne (his wife), and their family. They are amazing people and we had such a good time with them! We celebrated Ganesha Chathurthi, visited the Gandhi museum, and nursed Rob back to health (he got a nasty cold/flu after staying in the yoga course dorms!). First, we wanted to talk about Ganesha Chathurthi. It was an incredible, once in a lifetime, sort of experience.
So, Ganesha Chathurthi ("cha-TUR-tee" -- there is no "th" sound like in the English word "the" in the Hindi language. The "h" just means you aspirate after the "t". Yay, now you can pronounce all those Hindi words!).
Biggest party in Mumbai, and we got to catch it! What is this celebration all about, you ask? From what we could
understand, Ganesh (or Ganesha) (the elephant-headed Hindu god) is really popular in Mumbai/Bombay. There are rumored to be somewhere around 33 million Hindu gods, but Ganesh is probably in the top five in terms of popularity, and he is easily the most recognizable one for Westerners. But he's super popular in Mumbai. Our wonderful host family let us participate in some of their twice-daily rituals called "aarthi," which is where they gather the family together and sing prayer songs, ring bells, burn incense, and offer gifts to their god, in this case Ganesh.
(But don't get too wrapped up with this part about praying to "a god" rather than "God." We're struggling to understand Hinduism, but from what we have gathered so far, they don't draw a distinct line between "God" and "gods." Don't try to understand it from a Christian perspective. It doesn't work here!)
Okay, back to the celebration. Ganesha Chaturthi is the celebration of Ganesha's birthday. Each family or community goes and buys a Ganesh idol made out of clay (dry, but not fired to make it hard), which gets painted and adorned with all kinds of decorations. The family or community does the aarthi ritual twice a day for several days, and it varies from maybe 3 or 4 days to 10 days. At the end, they take the idol in a procession from the temple (a temporary temple created specifically for the occasion) to the oceanfront. There, they do one last aarthi, and then take the idol and immerse it in the ocean. Since it is made of clay, it just dissolves away. You're supposed to pick up a bit of sand from the sea floor where you immersed the idol, to keep until the next Ganesha Chaturthi.
Our friend Anshul is kind of big about hygiene, so it was pretty funny to watch him carry out his family duty of immersing the Ganesh in the dirty dirty water of Chowpatty Beach in Mumbai! He had to dunk his head all the way under water (several times) in order to get the sand for the next year! We had to leave Mumbai the next day, so I didn't get to see if he came down with any waterborne diseases, but I haven't heard anything. Hope you are okay, Ansul!
This whole Ganesha Chaturthi is celebrated all over the city, though. Actually, I think it's all over the country, and maybe the world, but it's certainly a very big deal in Mumbai. And people observe Ganesha Chaturthi with varying degrees of religious decorum and sobriety. Whereas the one we saw was a private affair with just a few people, there are also people that parade their Ganesh idols through the streets and have entire drum and horn squads blaring music late into the night while people dance and drink and douse themselves with orange powder. There are traffic police that have to help move traffic around these processions in some of the busier parts of town. There are small idols and temples on one corner, and giant idols (over 10 feet) with elaborate temples across the street. It's quite a scene. Hopefully, that gives you some idea of the celebration. Wikipedia can probably give you a more accurate academic description, but those were our impressions. We were lucky to see it, and doubly so to be able to participate!
After the yoga course, we spent a few more days in Mumbai with our friend Anshul, Roxanne (his wife), and their family. They are amazing people and we had such a good time with them! We celebrated Ganesha Chathurthi, visited the Gandhi museum, and nursed Rob back to health (he got a nasty cold/flu after staying in the yoga course dorms!). First, we wanted to talk about Ganesha Chathurthi. It was an incredible, once in a lifetime, sort of experience.
So, Ganesha Chathurthi ("cha-TUR-tee" -- there is no "th" sound like in the English word "the" in the Hindi language. The "h" just means you aspirate after the "t". Yay, now you can pronounce all those Hindi words!).
Biggest party in Mumbai, and we got to catch it! What is this celebration all about, you ask? From what we could
understand, Ganesh (or Ganesha) (the elephant-headed Hindu god) is really popular in Mumbai/Bombay. There are rumored to be somewhere around 33 million Hindu gods, but Ganesh is probably in the top five in terms of popularity, and he is easily the most recognizable one for Westerners. But he's super popular in Mumbai. Our wonderful host family let us participate in some of their twice-daily rituals called "aarthi," which is where they gather the family together and sing prayer songs, ring bells, burn incense, and offer gifts to their god, in this case Ganesh.
(But don't get too wrapped up with this part about praying to "a god" rather than "God." We're struggling to understand Hinduism, but from what we have gathered so far, they don't draw a distinct line between "God" and "gods." Don't try to understand it from a Christian perspective. It doesn't work here!)
Okay, back to the celebration. Ganesha Chaturthi is the celebration of Ganesha's birthday. Each family or community goes and buys a Ganesh idol made out of clay (dry, but not fired to make it hard), which gets painted and adorned with all kinds of decorations. The family or community does the aarthi ritual twice a day for several days, and it varies from maybe 3 or 4 days to 10 days. At the end, they take the idol in a procession from the temple (a temporary temple created specifically for the occasion) to the oceanfront. There, they do one last aarthi, and then take the idol and immerse it in the ocean. Since it is made of clay, it just dissolves away. You're supposed to pick up a bit of sand from the sea floor where you immersed the idol, to keep until the next Ganesha Chaturthi.
Our friend Anshul is kind of big about hygiene, so it was pretty funny to watch him carry out his family duty of immersing the Ganesh in the dirty dirty water of Chowpatty Beach in Mumbai! He had to dunk his head all the way under water (several times) in order to get the sand for the next year! We had to leave Mumbai the next day, so I didn't get to see if he came down with any waterborne diseases, but I haven't heard anything. Hope you are okay, Ansul!
This whole Ganesha Chaturthi is celebrated all over the city, though. Actually, I think it's all over the country, and maybe the world, but it's certainly a very big deal in Mumbai. And people observe Ganesha Chaturthi with varying degrees of religious decorum and sobriety. Whereas the one we saw was a private affair with just a few people, there are also people that parade their Ganesh idols through the streets and have entire drum and horn squads blaring music late into the night while people dance and drink and douse themselves with orange powder. There are traffic police that have to help move traffic around these processions in some of the busier parts of town. There are small idols and temples on one corner, and giant idols (over 10 feet) with elaborate temples across the street. It's quite a scene. Hopefully, that gives you some idea of the celebration. Wikipedia can probably give you a more accurate academic description, but those were our impressions. We were lucky to see it, and doubly so to be able to participate!
Now for a few more pics from our last days in Mumbai:
