“Ganpati Bappa morya, Pudchaya varshi lawkar ya”

Friday, December 17 2004

These words are not new to anybody who has at least once been through the Ganpati festival in Maharashtra.This year I was in Poona so I also got a chance to have a good feel through this excitement. Although I had seen the celebrations in Nagar also but not

to such an extent as procession over here passed from very near to my house. The procession took almost six hours to pass through a distance of near about half a kilometer. The drummers were leading from the front continuously playing the traditional beats presenting the gift of culture to all, but the real the real decibel breaking source was at the back, speakers of very high power playing the music of some very famous bollywood movies. This year the top song was “dhoom machale” from the movie dhoom.

What this can be called? Worship? Celebration? Or whatever but certainly a normal person would never call all this as divinity.

Right from the dazzling firework show to scintillating drum beats nothing reminds us of lord Ganpati.The festival lasts ten days and the noise grows louder and louder day by day. I don’t want to hurt the so called religious feelings of the organizers. Religion

No doubt is an integral part of all lives but only till it does not interrupt the lives of others.

The governing bodies can hardly do anything in this regard because they are not setting up huge pandals to block the traffic and get our eardrums stretched up to their highest limit. The people only are the only one who can sort out this problem by self realization of the hazards caused and the long term effects and implications. The money is spent so lavishly that anyone who calls India a poor country will have to surely eat up his own words. The lightings turn the city even brighter than the days and musical waves create ripples through the sleep of many unperturbed souls. The essence of the spirit of festival goes missing between all these extraordinary activities surrounding the Galla.

These all activities indeed are a change for the otherwise busy people to give them a break from their usual chores, but it’s acceptable only till it’s restricted only to them and not causing trouble to others life. If observe more carefully

Some more interesting things will come to notice like people dancing like maniacs to the tunes of rhythm divine and some more popular English songs. The celebrations no where symbolize the traditionalism for which India is famous all over the world. The criticism is in no way against the ethics of celebrating the ganesh festival but the moral of the festive should not be dusted. We have got to take ourselves to reality in a country like India which still has majority population living even below normal conditions of sustaining life .in hardcore language it can only be called “what a great waste of time and money”.

Meanwhile all this I forget to make mention of the ganpati murthy which was coming from the end with hardly any people to be seen around it beside the organizers.

India Culturally – A Day at Pune University

INDIA CULTURALLY: IN AN HOUR

Date: 14th September 2005

Today I went to the University of Pune campus for filling the application form for my brother’s convocation. But what I saw there was an experience of lifetime.

As I was entering the main building I large number of policemen

Standing in front of the chancellor’s office, I being a first time visitor thought it may

Be a usual thing, until I saw the protest when I was leaving the campus.

First I went through the normal procedure of getting the form checked and all usual stuff, but I was quite relaxed as there were only a few people around me giving an impression to me that my work wud get over soon. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I am in India, as reached the place where I had to deposit the fees. There was a very long queue assembled in a snake type of structure chatting and waiting for there turn and this is where my tour started. The queue had all sorts of people from a worried lot to the genx revelers.

But the most amazing part of this was yet to cum. As I got a bit inside the queue I was able to clearly make out what sort of talk’s where going on , plus I was also figuring out some of the dresses wore by people around me. The first talk which I cud here was from a group of seven to eight gals, sporting the English speaking puneri crowd .There was nothing as such special in their chat but it was the noise and the faces which were drawing attention from the crowd. Then I saw a foreigner with an Indian friend, explaining abt the course she had taken, later I came to know that she was an Iranian.

Then I saw a majority of middle class people waiting patiently for their turn. And then heard a chat which personally embarrassed me a lot. This was a group of three, two gals and a guy .One girl out of them wasn’t speaking much playing the role of a patient listener. But the other girl with her screechy voice cud be heard quite easily even amongst so many people. The first statement which I heard was “Once I had a royal stag, and it tasted very bad”. And this statement was enough to draw my attention towards their conversation. The girl further went on to ask the guy abt how many drinks he cud take at one time and telling her own personal preferences. Now the fearless way in which she was speaking in public abt such things gave a clear indication abt her background and the effect of page3 culture on her.

As I moved further in the queue for some time I was parted from the conversation of this group to again draw me back to the first group of the puneri gals, who were eating Parle biscuits by this time while sharing some old and new stories.

Then I heard something least expected, sa re ga ma… the seven musical letters. This was again a group of three a guy, and two girls both wearing salwar suits and doing a sort of riyaz as far as I cud make out.

So by this time from whisky to riyaz I had, already had a culture curry as I wud like it to be called. Not to mention the variety of dresses people were wearing from decent to pathetic and western to purely Indian.

Now again got close to the daring gal and this time she asked the guy something u wud expect from her, the question was “Why do guys from fergussion usually have so many gopika’s around them?” Well fortunately or unfortunately I didn’t get to here the answer and it was the last talk I heard from this group. Then there was a girlfriend sitting with her boyfriend’s cell phone, out of the queue, keeping him in touch every time the phone rang.

What else I cud hav expected in such short time of abt one and a half hour, after leaving the campus I felt like I had a complete tour of the changing times of Indian culture, from the transition to old is gold all in one lot. And while I was walking out there was a protest going on from pg sc/st students, which is a different matter all together .So I am still not being able to sum it up but time has done that for me, it’s 2:13 am and I hav to go to college tomorrow, back to basics after a journey of a different kind.