Goodbye, Mr Guns, Come Again Next Year.

          It bugged our uncles no end when we children, cousins all, called Him “Mr Guns”.

          “Show some respect,” they’d holler at us. “He’s God.”

          In spite of the dos (be spruced for the aartees) and don’ts (eating non-vegetarian food) involved, Guns Ganapathy remained a favourite god. Rama had the Rama-raksha prayer chanted to him every evening. Dear Dutta, our neighbours’ family deity, had Thursday’s fast dedicated to him, a fast which involved distribution of the yummiest pedhas. Our own Goan Manguesh frowned on fish/meat-consumption on Mondays, but was otherwise a liberal sort. It was only Ganapathy who visited our homes briefly at a dedicated time of the year and went away into the sea whilst we sang ourselves hoarse persuading him to come again the following year. The ditty went like this: Ganapathy Bappa Morya, pudhchya varshee lavkar yaa. Ganapathy gaylay gaavaalaa, chaieen padaynaa aamhaalaa. Loosely translated: Ganapathy, Father, also called Morya (short form of Moreshwar), next year, please come soon. Ganapathy has gone to his village, we aren’t liking that all.

          Every year’s statue had to be a coconut-palm-leaf-vein thicker than the previous year’s. Approximately 2 mms. Most statues in those days fitted in an adult palm. The decorations were made of things that were plucked, often home-grown. The word bio-degradable wasn’t found in the lexicon of my youth.

          I can’t say just when plastic, thermocole and flashing lights came to be part of the Ganesh festival, but I’m sure it coincided with the size-increase of the idols, when the raw material changed from mud to plaster-of-Paris.

          The immersions then involved clanging small cymbals and singing the goodbyes to Mr Guns with gusto. We all felt bad that the modaks weren’t going to be made for another twelve months. People didn’t eat festive foods when they felt like it. They didn’t go out and buy neuryo, chaklyo, kadbolyo either. Like the delicious moonga-shaak gravy, those snacks, too, were homemade and only when religious norms demanded them to be consumed. We’ve trashed that discipline long years ago. As we’ve been trashing Mr Guns’ statues.

          I remember the idols being carefully lowered into the waves of the sea, not tossed over Mandovi or some other bridge. I remember gathering little peaks of sand where our statue stood overnight, dissolving by the inch with every hour. Now we see broken limbs, crushed trunks, an eye here, a ear there, crabs scampering all over what was until a day before His Holiness. Smothered by plastic, dead weeds and other broken statues, it’s an ugly sight. All the singing of praises and praying can’t wish that rubbish away. Instead of ‘to dust returneth’, municipal trucks toss the leftovers of Mr Guns along with domestic and industrial garbage into smelly, maggot-filled pits.

          I remember my late uncles’ words: “Show respect, He’s God.”

          We no longer celebrate the Ganesh festival. The elders couldn’t cope with the traditions and the younger generation was too busy or not inclined to carry them forward.

I always wonder what the worshippers who bring Ganesh idols home annually think of the muck that lines the coast after the festivities are over. After any religious or political rally, pictures of leaders are ripped and trampled upon and no one minds when they are chucked into the gutters to rot in sewage. But in the case of Mr Guns, people fervently believe that he’s a living god who saves them when they’re in trouble, gives them extra marks to pass an exam, prompts interviewers to give them jobs, finds them great spouses, keeps illness away, brings prosperity, etc, etc. I wonder why/how they don’t mind his likenesses being treated so shabbily.

This is one festival that messes up our beaches/ rivers/ wells/ lakes big time. All underwater life, including edible fish, suffers. Ugliness rules. Whither sanctity? Whenever I think of this, I remember an episode: in Uttar Pradesh, away from the coast where this festival is important, in a not-so-wealthy Maharashtrian home, a pious housewife celebrated this festival with a supari, a betel-nut. Her daughter had decorated the little dried fruit with felt pens and some coloured threads to make it look like a little Ganesh. He sat on a match-box pedestal that was covered with golden paper, and the decorations were flowers and leaves from the pots on their sill, changed twice a day. No compromise on food or the singing of the hymns, no dilution of devotion. Came the day of immersion. With ceremonious fanfare, that family of four plus a handful of neighbours carefully carried Mr Guns on a tray and respectfully placed him inside a bucket of clean water. The next day, water and supari was poured into the roots of a favourite plant.

I have a feeling Mr Guns would have enjoyed His stay in their home more than in any that smoke him out with incense, and stifle him with plastic, Made In China decorations and gifts bought with black cash.

My late uncles would not have noticed, never mind commented on our ‘Mr Guns’ tag if they’d seen the mess after immersions that happens these days. They would have been so appalled, they would have been at a loss for words. A miracle, that.

Goodbye, Mr Guns, Come Again Next Year.

          It bugged our uncles no end when we children, cousins all, called Him “Mr Guns”.

          “Show some respect,” they’d holler at us. “He’s God.”

          In spite of the dos (be spruced for the aartees) and don’ts (eating non-vegetarian food) involved, Guns Ganapathy remained a favourite god. Rama had the Rama-raksha prayer chanted to him every evening. Dear Dutta, our neighbours’ family deity, had Thursday’s fast dedicated to him, a fast which involved distribution of the yummiest pedhas. Our own Goan Manguesh frowned on fish/meat-consumption on Mondays, but was otherwise a liberal sort. It was only Ganapathy who visited our homes briefly at a dedicated time of the year and went away into the sea whilst we sang ourselves hoarse persuading him to come again the following year. The ditty went like this: Ganapathy Bappa Morya, pudhchya varshee lavkar yaa. Ganapathy gaylay gaavaalaa, chaieen padaynaa aamhaalaa. Loosely translated: Ganapathy, Father, also called Morya (short form of Moreshwar), next year, please come soon. Ganapathy has gone to his village, we aren’t liking that all.

          Every year’s statue had to be a coconut-palm-leaf-vein thicker than the previous year’s. Approximately 2 mms. Most statues in those days fitted in an adult palm. The decorations were made of things that were plucked, often home-grown. The word bio-degradable wasn’t found in the lexicon of my youth.

          I can’t say just when plastic, thermocole and flashing lights came to be part of the Ganesh festival, but I’m sure it coincided with the size-increase of the idols, when the raw material changed from mud to plaster-of-Paris.

          The immersions then involved clanging small cymbals and singing the goodbyes to Mr Guns with gusto. We all felt bad that the modaks weren’t going to be made for another twelve months. People didn’t eat festive foods when they felt like it. They didn’t go out and buy neuryo, chaklyo, kadbolyo either. Like the delicious moonga-shaak gravy, those snacks, too, were homemade and only when religious norms demanded them to be consumed. We’ve trashed that discipline long years ago. As we’ve been trashing Mr Guns’ statues.

          I remember the idols being carefully lowered into the waves of the sea, not tossed over Mandovi or some other bridge. I remember gathering little peaks of sand where our statue stood overnight, dissolving by the inch with every hour. Now we see broken limbs, crushed trunks, an eye here, a ear there, crabs scampering all over what was until a day before His Holiness. Smothered by plastic, dead weeds and other broken statues, it’s an ugly sight. All the singing of praises and praying can’t wish that rubbish away. Instead of ‘to dust returneth’, municipal trucks toss the leftovers of Mr Guns along with domestic and industrial garbage into smelly, maggot-filled pits.

          I remember my late uncles’ words: “Show respect, He’s God.”

          We no longer celebrate the Ganesh festival. The elders couldn’t cope with the traditions and the younger generation was too busy or not inclined to carry them forward.

I always wonder what the worshippers who bring Ganesh idols home annually think of the muck that lines the coast after the festivities are over. After any religious or political rally, pictures of leaders are ripped and trampled upon and no one minds when they are chucked into the gutters to rot in sewage. But in the case of Mr Guns, people fervently believe that he’s a living god who saves them when they’re in trouble, gives them extra marks to pass an exam, prompts interviewers to give them jobs, finds them great spouses, keeps illness away, brings prosperity, etc, etc. I wonder why/how they don’t mind his likenesses being treated so shabbily.

This is one festival that messes up our beaches/ rivers/ wells/ lakes big time. All underwater life, including edible fish, suffers. Ugliness rules. Whither sanctity? Whenever I think of this, I remember an episode: in Uttar Pradesh, away from the coast where this festival is important, in a not-so-wealthy Maharashtrian home, a pious housewife celebrated this festival with a supari, a betel-nut. Her daughter had decorated the little dried fruit with felt pens and some coloured threads to make it look like a little Ganesh. He sat on a match-box pedestal that was covered with golden paper, and the decorations were flowers and leaves from the pots on their sill, changed twice a day. No compromise on food or the singing of the hymns, no dilution of devotion. Came the day of immersion. With ceremonious fanfare, that family of four plus a handful of neighbours carefully carried Mr Guns on a tray and respectfully placed him inside a bucket of clean water. The next day, water and supari was poured into the roots of a favourite plant.

I have a feeling Mr Guns would have enjoyed His stay in their home more than in any that smoke him out with incense, and stifle him with plastic, Made In China decorations and gifts bought with black cash.

My late uncles would not have noticed, never mind commented on our ‘Mr Guns’ tag if they’d seen the mess after immersions that happens these days. They would have been so appalled, they would have been at a loss for words. A miracle, that.

Food For the Lord

                              Think Ganapati, think modaks. No other God eats those soft, white, bite-sized pleated domes. Making them is an art: the freshly ground rice flour is kneaded into a dough, the dough is lightly steamed and kneaded again. The stuffing is made with equal amounts of fresh, grated coconut-flesh and jaggery cooked together and flavoured with powdered cardamom and nutmeg. The wealthy add to it crushed almonds or pistachios. A small ball of the dough is moulded inside a ghee-greased palm and after the stuffing is held in place, gently ‘fingered’ into shape. It’s steamed yet again and eaten hot with melted ghee poured over it.

The ‘modak’ shape is now standardized. You can even buy boxes of mass-made modak-shaped pedhas to give as corporate gifts. In some homes, the traditional modaks aren’t steamed but fried (in which case the casing is made of wheat flour).  For some reason, Ganapati eats what he likes in multiples of 21. It’s said he eats 21 modaks in a single gulp. Not too difficult for someone with an elephant’s mouth.

During the period that the Ganapati is worshiped in a house, the inmates cannot eat anything non-vegetarian. Interestingly, onions and garlic aren’t considered ‘pure’ vegetarian fare either. The menu comprises dishes seldom found in restaurants, not repeated for any of the meals.

In our ancestral home, the breakfasts are either idli-sambar or uppeet (upma) made of semolina or dosa-like crepes. No eggs, no wheat flour used. Bananas, custard-apples, papayas, and other local fruit is kept readily available to ‘munch’ on lest one feels hungry, for lunch can happen only after the pooja-aarti is over, and that can take up the entire day if the priest gets delayed somewhere.

Lunch and dinner have similar menus: sprouted green-gram curry, plain-cooked unseasoned daal, two vegetables, a salad of finely chopped cucumbers and its raw cousins, a gravy made with finely ground coconut, puris (deep fried puffed bread), and rice. A sweet kheer is a must. All the items,  including pickles and chutneys are served in a particular way and served on a banana leaf first to Ganapati. Only when the offering is prayed over can lunch be declared ‘open’. In conservative homes, men eat before the women.

Never mind the religious significance. The Ganapati (or Ganesh) Festival is a social one. Family members converge onto the ancestral home. Cousins meet annually, old and young catch up on news, marriages are arranged, gossip about the old and the dead get whispered from ear to ear.

Fish-loving foodies who keep the idol in their homes for eleven days suffer. Suffer? Yes. Goans can’t live without fish, you would know that by now. And so many days of strict no-fish enforced penance is a cruelty of sorts (sob). I’m told that in some homes, a small fire is lit outside a window and a bit of dried fish tossed on it. The smelly smoke encourages hunger and that’s how some die-hard fish-foodies survives. More commonly, the moment the idol is immersed, people race to the market to buy the fish that they craved for through the holy-days of the festival.

Interestingly, the food made for the goddess Gauri has a fixed menu. When she was pregnant with Ganapati, someone told me the myth goes, she didn’t like the taste of salt in her food. In her honour, in our home, the pumpkin is cooked with ginger, green chillies and grated coconut, but without salt. Since none of the food can be tasted until it’s served, all the other dishes have to be made by experienced hands. But this pumpkin dish can be made by the youngest daughter/in-law because the salt has to be added later. Perhaps this was a way to introduce the young girls to the complicated kitchen regulations they would subsequently have to handle.

The best part of the Ganapati food is the prasad. A mixture of roasted coconut-shavings and poppy-seeds mixed with cashews, raisins, sugar-crystals and a dash of honey is my favourite. The halwa made of semolina with mashed banana is another. The slightly sticky fluid made of curd, milk, ghee, honey and sugar is something one gets just a spoonful of.

The heavy downpours are over, light showers reign. Ganapati’s arrival and departure announce the harvesting of one crop and the sowing of another.