Ganpati Bappa Morya !!
Ganpati festival was one event which i always looked forward for, specially the Visarjan part. In my school days i remember we used to run to the opposite King’s Circle Bridge and sit on the paari late in the afternoon and sit and watch all different types of Ganesh Murti’s with people dancing like crazy on the Nasik and the Poona Dhol.
There were couple of favorites Ganesh celebrations in our locality and we used to go there and enjoy the most one was Pramanik Ganpati and other was Gokul Ganpati. Both used to have great Visarjan Celebrations with Huge gang of Poona Dhol players along with Lezim. As I am writing this article I can feel the Dhol beats within me.
I have great memories about Ganpati Visarjan and I am sure others have to. So let your memories flow out and lets all shout out loud… GANPATI BAPPA MOORYA
Uploaded picture is of Lalbaug Cha Raja – Year 2009
Nitul, This can’t be happening!! As soon as Samir was done with his work, I got his laptop to write an article about Visarjan on KV site and here you have already posted it. 🙂 Although I was planning a different heading “What a nuisance Ganapati Visarjan has become”.
Agree, we all have fond memories from our childhood about particular places, events, festivals etc. We also used to watch Ganesh Visarjan from main road out side our compound. But don’t recollect whether at that time there used to be “Pav-Vada” and water stalls on the road on that particular day.
Here in Mulund our building is right on M.G. road from where all the trucks go for visarjan. Right out side our building there is a pav-vada and water stall. I see all these plastic glasses and paper plates, newspaper lying all around on the road and I couldn’t bear the sight. On top of it, it is pouring in Mulund. And I kept telling myself, I want to pen it down on Kutchvalley!!
All that trash on the road + loud noise + smoke from the fire cracker = Visarjan day.
I miss the Ganpati festival and this is one festival where we cannot do much in the USA. We celebrate Holi, Navratri here and dont miss it as much. But Ganesh Festival is something special in India. All those big ganpatis and different decorations and going to various famous ganpati pandals in the area.
I miss the Ganpati. Other than festive occasion that I miss is Janmashtami.
More than visarjan, I would have more fun to visit different pandals to see different idols and stand in line to do darshan and take prasad.
Most of us memories that are 5/10/15 years old. From that point it was interesting to read Amisha’s comment about how things have changed. Over the years, Ganpati too has become more and more politicized and commercialized (similar to Dandia).
Few days back I had read (don’t recollect where) that one of the Mandal in Ahmedabad has been doing eco-friendly visarjans. They have the same ganpati idol for past 4 years but they keep a Supari near the Ganpati and do a symbolic visarjan of the supari instead of the idol.
Smita can correct me, but as I remember in Pune they don’t do visarjan of big idol but use smaller one for visarjan.
We typically visit Sunnyvale or Fremont Temple for Ganpati darshan here but couldn’t do that also this time:-(
We have big Ganpati pandal adjacent to our Bldg in Santacruz. They used to show movie every night on street Big screen TV projector. Instead of going down our whole family used to watch it from half window facing that side of street. Loud speakers playing songs all day long, sports and fancy dress competitions. On street movie and loud speakers are long gone. Only thing remaining is cultural program competition now.
Bhagwan cut piece Ganpati in Santacruz West used to be very popular. Queue will reach Santacruz station sometimes. We stood in queue for 2-3 hr for darshan. In addition to huge idol, they used to have grand, special effect pandal with different theme each year.