Ganesha festival

Ganesha, the elephant god, is one of the most popular Hindu deities. The Ganesha festival, which usually takes place in September in Hyderabad, is one of the highlights of the year.



From what I was told, the ancient tradition was to form a Ganesha statue out of clay, worship it for 11 days and then immerse it in Hussainsagar Lake. The statue would then dissolve in the water.

In the meantime, things have changed a bit and instead of small clay figures, Ganesha statues made from plast of Paris dominate the szene. In fact, there seems to be a competition about who has the biggest and most beautiful Ganesha statue. We've see Ganesha statues of different colors, sizes and shapes. People take great pride in their neighborhood's or family's Ganesha and posters with the photos of the local Ganesha committee members decorate the villages of our research area.

The other side of the coin, however, is the pollution caused by the chemicals that are used to form and paint the statues.

The final day of the festival was 25 September, the office was closed on that day. Of course, the best place to go would have been Hussainsagar Lake but we decided not to go there. The traffic situation is bad even on normal days but on that day, going to the city centre would have meant hours in traffic jams. We had heard that in the previous year, a million people had been at the lake.

Instead, we went to a place where many statues pass on their way to Hussainsagar Lake. People were already sitting and standing along the road awaiting the procession of Ganeshas on trucks. In one place, a Ganesha committee had set up a platform and a big sound system. The atmosphere there was great! On top of the drumming from the guys accompanying the trucks with the Ganesha statues, there was earpiercing pop music.