Mumbai Ganpati Festival - It takes thousand hands to create God

The much-awaited grandeur of Ganpati festival is on its way and we can’t keep calm. Mumbai known for its lights, glamour, dream, revenue and its marine drive; is also known for its celebration and for going crazy in all sorts during this 11 days festival celebrating the birth of Bappa – God who takes away all the hurdles and brings prosperity.

This year, as every year, the Ganapati Festival is coming with even greater expectation and fanfare. With so many disasters happening all over India and abroad, people have all the eyes and hopes with Ganpati bappa to get everything sorted smoothly like a bite of ‘Modak’.

In addition to the increasing number of devotees, the Ganpati festival is also a wonderful spectacle. Nowhere can one experience it better than in Mumbai, the city of this festival’s origin.

While most of us will be busy celebrating the festival and taking glance of all the different varieties of idols and elaborate decors of public Ganapati Mandals, the effort of the people working all year towards the festival may be lost like always. For some of them the festival is one of the largest, if not the sole means of income and for many it is the festival that fulfills their creativity lust. We take this opportunity to let you meet and know those thousand hands that make this festival ‘celebrate-able’, those thousand hands that make this huge magical, powerful yet super cute lord – GANESHA

The Idol Maker: Creating God

The idols get more creative every year. We get to see large varieties of idols with the God in different poses. We see idols that are from a foot tall to ones that are over 30 feet. These idols were originally made of clay but most have shifted to Plaster of Paris today due to the time and cost involved in making clay idols. Idol making however is still a huge business and many of the people have been involved over generations in their family, either as a business or as an artisan. Every year, there are close to a million idols being made and sold across India and the world.

But would you know that these idols are being produced almost throughout the year for the festival? In fact most idol makers only pause during the festival to sell the idols and get back to work immediately at the end of the festival in preparation for the next year.

Ravindra Palekar who stays in Nalasopara, travels to Lower Parel every morning at around 5am to give life to this huge Ganesha fondly known as ‘Parel ka Maharaja’, “it was tough for me to get into the team of Arun Datte, a famous sculptor from Mumbai who creates huge idols from sketch to final detailing” said Ravindra while working on a 32ft idol of parel on its 75^th year of celebration this year.

Talking about the small idols that is pride of almost each home is no less. The idols are now made using pre-moulds and come together over the course of the year. The process starts with the Plaster of Paris being laid into the mould, drying, polishing, shading the idol, putting together the eyes, applying lacquer, metallic colour and finally the last layer of golden colour. “the demand of clay & eco-friendly idols have increased over the course of last 10 years” says Madhav Bohir while giving a final touch to a Ganpati idol.

The Music Maker: A beat to usher in divinity

Vijay Patil, around 35 years old, started following a routine like every year, he packs his equipment late night and is leaving for Mumbai from Karjat everyday when few days remain for the festival. He gets orders for ushering Ganpati idols from the workshops to the respective mandals. Where on the other hand is Sunil Shinde who waits outside workshops and plays his drums patiently till he can solicit the interest of a customer, once the customer is pleased, Sunil will get few hundred rupees to escort idol to customer’s home.

What he gets for his efforts is very subjective and varies from a few rupees to a few hundred. Sunil and the others consider anything upward from rupees five hundred to be a good day. Sometimes they are indeed lucky and get paid large sums, even in thousands, by a wealthy person or by big mandals.

Vijal Patil and the others will repeat this in different locations for the rest of the festival but the most profitable are the first day and the eleventh day of Ananth Chaturthi, when most of the largest Ganapati idols are taken to be immersed with loud pomp and celebrations for the return of the God back to his abode. If lucky, the drummers, Vijay included, get hired as a group to play their dhols or a portable version of the snare drum with the procession till the idol is immersed.

When the Lord will return to his abode, so will Vijay, Sunil and the others to their homes with what they made in the 11 days; to a routine of odd jobs and to a long wait for the next year to come with hopes of pudchya varshi laukar ya (“O Lord, come back early next year” in Marathi).

The Thermocol Moulder: An earthly home for a God

Every devotee welcomes the Lord Ganesha to his or her home and ensures that his stay is most comfortable during the period of the festival. The Lord is fed his choicest foods like the modak, dressed in rich clothes and worshipped every day where he is asked to remove any hurdles or obstacles in the path of his devotees.

In addition to being fed and dressed well, it also makes sense for the Lord to be kept in a well designed temple during the tenure of his stay. Maybe a simple box temple or even an elaborately designed piece of work with carvings and sculptures etched on it, with massive carved pillars for support. EPF popularly called Thermocol, is the answer.

In his business of 24 years, Sushma Jain has been selling Thermocol decorations for Ganapati. The rest of the year is normal business selling some seasonal items with sales spiking a bit on important festivals like Diwali and Id-E-Milad. But Ganapati festival is special and much larger than any other festival for selling Thermocal. Sushma calmly mentions that sales during the festival can be almost 20 times more than normal times and constitutes a very large portion of his business. She supplies across the country and reaches up to the Middle East so a ban in thermocol in Mumbai will not take away all her fortune.

The Idol Bearer: Plunging the Lord into the seas

Somesh Pawar looks back over the bamboo enclosure to see if more people are arriving with their Ganpati Idols. Pawar is an excellent swimmer and a local resident of juhu since his birth. He has this special job every year on the second, fifth, seventh and eleventh day of the festival.

When the Lord Ganesha finishes his stay at any home, he is immersed into water through which he is believed to go back to his abode carrying with him all the troubles of the devotee.

When the day arrives, the devotees carry the idol to the local pond, lake or the sea and make a last prayer thanking the God for his presence for the last few days. Once they have given their final offering of prayers, they hand over the idol to a special team of men. Pawar is one of those men. His job is then to take the idol, facing towards the devotees who wait at the shores and carry it into the creek behind him and slowly swim towards the deep end. He then will show the devotees a last glimpse of the idol and then immerse it completely into the water.

Pawar’s job is special for many reasons. He likes the job he does and looks forward to it each year. Being a huge devotee himself, he has been taking part in the Visarjan rituals for the last 20 or more years. Once the immersion is complete, the devotee might pay him a token for his grand gesture. This could range from just some sweet prasad or a few hundred rupees. This is the same for the other members of the team.

A few years earlier this part of the process was quite unorganised but nowadays the local corporation takes great pains to make the entire process smooth. Hence, they now appoint volunteers and register them. They also provide for a team of lifeguards on the site in case the need arises.

Interestingly many of the unknown heroes involved in this devotion and task in making this festival of Mumbai successful have a routine job but come back each year because of their devotion. Money is not their ultimate goal, People forget the contribution of important key men in this festival like the hundreds of people collecting chanda (donations) to the thousands of people giving them, from the men who makes platforms to the men driving trucks, from the beautiful women making Prasad to the gorgeous crowd dancing to the beats of DJ; but that is alright for them, they are devotees who do not care about monitory benefits, they find themselves blessed to work and dance together for their favorite almighty god – Ganesha.

If this article gives you a lust to travel to Mumbai during Ganesh festival, do note to make advance arrangements for yourself. In this season, this city is crowded with ultimate devotion, dedication, profound happiness and lots and lots of Love. Ganpati Bappa Morya!