Ganpati Bappa Moraya!

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By: EWT Correspondent

S
hivaji Park, Lal Baug, and Chowpatty – all famous venues in Mumbai - seemingly came to the grounds all over Florida - albeit on a smaller scale with various organizations and temples celebrating the Ganesh Chathurthi with great ethusiasm and high spirits. Children of all age groups along with Adults ceebrated this festival with pooja and cultural programs.
For thousands of years Ganesh Chathurthi was only held in people’s homes, but that changed in 1894 when Bal Gangadhar Tilak himself placed a Sri Ganesh murthy for this specific puja in the public square of Vinchurkar Wada in Maharashtra. Lokmanya Tilak is one of the foremost important leaders of India’s Independence movement and he used the puja to circumvent the British curfew on political gatherings. Tilak started this concept of a Sarvajanik puja– a community wide event to bring people together, unify Hindus, freedom fighters and make it an important annual puja to mark opposition to the oppressive British colonial rule. Now this puja is done with great fervor and fanfare throughout India, and it continues to break barriers amongst people while preserving a Hindu tradition. In Mumbai, the Sri Ganesh pujas are celebrated by people of different faiths. The Sri Ganesh celebration has certainly been kept alive and thriving all over the US including Florida and Lokmanya Tilak’s motivation of unifying the diverse groups.
On Saturday, Sept. 18th, the Hindu Society of Central Florida’s temple in Casselberry and the Orlando Marathi Mandal celebrated the Sri Ganesh Visarjan with great enthusiasm; the highlights were the puja, the cultural show and colorful parade. It was the culmination of a weeklong celebration of India’s very popular sarvajanik/ community Sri Ganesh Utsav. The Casselberry temple had a capacity crowd of over 700 on the first and last days of the event; many came do special pujas and others to pray and participate in the festivities. The first day celebrates the birth of Sri Ganesh and the last day celebrates when the form becomes formless. The pujas were led by all four priests of the temple and Mahaprasad was served.
On Visarjan –when the clay murthy was immersed in water – the children at Casselberry temple - numbering over 50 conducted the puja and were led by Priest Ashok Shukla. He explained the meaning of each step and the children repeated the mantras after him and the adults who filled the hall witnessed with great joy. According to Shuklaji’s explanation to the children, this celebration signifies people inviting Sri Ganesh - in clay form - into their home. This is the Supreme Being arriving at home and after the celebrations at Visarjan, it is time to accept the eternal cosmic law - that which takes form has to become formless again - in a never ending cycle (Chakra).
The program also included a medley of cultural performances like, songs by Yogini Joshi; tabla by Vaibhav Joshi, dance performances by several talented youth and the traditional lazim dance popular in Maharashtra was done with great gusto by both men and women dressed in colorful Marathi attire. Generally, during all days of this celebration, artistic homage is paid to the Supreme Creator; on Friday 17th September there was a special music performance by the Hyderabad Brothers who are world famous exponents of Carnatic music.
The Visarjan at the temple included dholak drums, devotional songs, and a lazim dance procession which was followed by the ritual immersion of the Sri Ganesh Murthy in water. All throughout the several days of celebrations, one could hear “Ganapati Bappa Morya, Pudchya Varshi Laukar Ya” (O Sri Ganesh, return quickly the next year); and especially on Visarjan day, chanting this, the followers bid Sri Ganesh farewell.

Posted by admin on Oct 1st, 2010 and is filed under Headlines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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