Hindu Rituals

I’d never really seen any kind of Hindu rite or ritual. In fact, I don’t know really know that much about Hinduism in general. But for the past couple weeks, there has been this huge Hindu festival called Ganpati, celebrating the god Ganesh. Ganesh is the one that looks like an elephant.

So, the story goes (and I’m bastardizing it here) that Ganesh was the son of Lord Krishna. But apparently, father and son had not seen each other in many years. One day, Krishna comes to the house, and knocks on the door. Ganesh’s mother was bathing, and Ganesh, not recognizing his own father, refuses him entry. Krishna, not recognizing his own son, gets really angry, and chops his head off. (I know, it escalates really quickly. But religious stories usually do). His mother comes out to see what happened, and demands that Krishna go out, and bring the head of the first animal he sees to give to their son. And so, Ganesh has the head of an elephant. He represents wisdom, knowledge, and fortune.

Ganpati lasts 10 days. Standard procedure is that families buy these statues of Ganesh, ranging anywhere from 1 foot tall to 8 feet tall. They set up a shrine around the statutes in their homes. On a given day (either the 2^nd, 5^th, 7^th, or 10^th day, each family does it differently), folks take their statues to the sea, and immerse them in the water. A co-worker invited me to his family’s house for their immersion, and that was the first time I’d ever seen any kind of Hindu ritual. Once you say some prayers at the house, you then take the Ganesh statue on a long, slow procession to the water. Along the way, there are groups of young men playing drums, people are dancing in the street, and folks are setting off fireworks. The whole thing kind of seemed like a non-alcoholic Mardi Gras.

The biggest Ganesh statues are often 30 or 40 feet tall. One of the biggest and most important Ganesh statues in Mumbai was about a block away from my office. Huge masses of people would wait up to 16 hours to see it. Someone in my office knew a guy who knew a guy, so we got to skip the line. I felt kind of bad, cutting a bunch of genuine believers who have been waiting hours to see this statue, but it was a once in a lifetime experience. The main line leading to the statue went straight back, for like a half mile, and you are in this giant crowd, being pushed closer, inch by inch, to the statue. We were in that line for about an hour. Once you get to the feet of the statue, it’s a fucking madhouse. It was kind of like being in a mosh pit. You are at the statue for like 30 seconds, before you are violently pushed to the exit by the mass of people behind you waiting for their turn to say their prayers to Ganesh.

The tenth day is the biggest day. All the biggest statues, including the one near my office, are taken to be immersed. My office was closed that day, simply because it would have been impossible to access the office. A huge truck carries the Ganesh statue, and a second huge truck in front carries literally a wall of amplifiers blasting Bollywood pop music. You would see this all over the city. It was intense.

About 2 weeks before Ganpati started, there was another festival (this one only for one day) called Dahi Handi. This one celebrates Krishna. The story is that as a child, Krishna loved butter in particular and dairy products in general. Traditionally, dairy products were kept in a particular type of clay pot. Krishna would go around, climbing on top of things, stealing pots of various dairy products. So during this festival, people string up these traditional pots like 30 or 40 feet in the air. Groups of young men then form human pyramids by standing on each other’s shoulders and try to reach the pot. Charitable rich people put up money to give to the winning team. Some of these groups were impressive. The tallest ones had like 6 levels of people on each other’s shoulders. These tallest ones had like 100 people in the group because the base has to be really large. The most surprising aspect of it was that the person on the very top of the pyramid was always an 11 year old boy, wearing only a helmet and a life jacket as protection. No one else had any kind of protection on. I didn’t see anything, but apparently people get terribly injured every year.