Hi Friends,
With last week's Varamahalaxmi Pooja (Laxmi, the goddess of wealth), India is gearing up for the season of festivals with Ganesha Chaturthi, Vijayadashami and Diwali(Festival of lights) to follow soon.
Ganesha Chaturthi is slated for 7th September and Lord Ganesha, known as Vighna Nivaaraka meaning the remover of obstacles is the One who will be worshipped before any other gods to get rid of obstacles on the work we do.
Ganesha Chaturthi is celebrated with preparation of various sweets like ladoo, modak and other sweet items including many other food items.
Normally, Ganesha idol will be worshipped for 9 days in most of the states and in the state of Maharashtra, the idol will be worshipped for almost a month and then immersed into water(we call it as visarjan).
History of Lord Ganesha:
As per Indian mythology, Lord Ganesha is the son of Lord Shiva (who is believed to be the supreme creator, protector and One who transforms this universe as per Hindu Mythology) and Goddess Parvathi.
It is believed that, Goddess Parvathi created Lord Ganesha with turmeric paste used for bathing and instilled life in him using her supreme powers.
When she planned to take bath, asked Ganesha to be the gatekeeper until she comes out of bath. When Lord Shiva, Ganesha's father came into house, Ganesha refused to let him inside the house as his mother was taking bath and furious Lord Shiva is believed to behead Lord Ganesha without knowing that he is his own son.
When Goddess Parvathi came back from bath, she saw her beheaded son and threatened to destroy the universe if her son's head is not reunited.
Lord Shiva asked Lord Brahma (who is believed to be the One who brought this universe into existence) to bring head of First creature he encounters and Lord Brahma happens to see an Elephant brings it's head and that's how Lord Ganesha got head of an Elephant.
For this year's Ganesha Chaturthi, we booked Ganesha yesterday and will be bringing home the idol on 7th September and will be worshipping it for 5 days as per our rituals.
The Ganesha idol shown above, is the One we booked as we liked the beautiful eyes and the pleasant look on face of the idol.
This sitting position is also unique and out of the Ones we saw, this One looked more attractive and resembling Lord Ganesha.
As we can see, there is still work going on to fix the ornaments on dhoti(the cloth used on Lord Ganesha idol which is there in pink color) and also around his arms and that crown he is having.
Ganesha idols will be in different size and many idols will be based on recent developments happening around the World.
Heard like this year, eco friendly Tree Ganesha is the main attraction as the city of Hyderabad is gearing up to spend about 1 Crore Indian Rupees (Roughly about 119K US Dollars) to prepare eco friendly Ganesha fully prepared with mud instead of Plaster of Paris(PoP) for the Ganesha idol to be worshipped in Khairatabad area in Hyderabad in the state of Telangana.
More details in this link with picture of Ganesha idol preparation as below:
Source
Let me share some of the idols I saw while checking for One for our home and these are comparatively smaller Ones preferred for worshipping at home instead of at a center place in the colony or city place.
With those vibrant colors and attractive face, we thought of booking this One, but, unfortunately, someone had already booked this One. People will spend hours together to choose an idol as it will be once in a year festival and Lord Ganesha is always the First choice worshipper for most of the people.
Apart from those artificial colored idols, it's also a trend now to worship the idols without many colors and the mere mud idol is being worshipped by many as the One shown in above screenshot.
Those yellow, orange and white colors used on forehead, forehand and fingers will be like neon colors and will glow when the light is switched off and multicolor light is focused on the idol.
This is another uncolored Ganesha idol with a slight yellow colored mud used little bit of colors used as ornaments for finger nails eyes and all these are also the main attraction for those who doesn't want to go with artificial colored idols.
Overall, the festival season is catching up and we are left with a little over a week's time to get ready for welcoming Lord Ganesha into our homes and we need to prepare those foods he likes and also bring home the crackers as this and festival of lights (Diwali) will not be complete without crackers.
Hoping to bring out another blog on Lord Ganesha when we bring him home on 7th September and I will be more eager the show the pics of Lord Ganesha with all those decorations, colorful lights and those food items.
Until then, take care and keep blogging :)