Thursday, April 24, 2008
Ganesh at sea
I was out riding my bike one Saturday and came across these little boys carrying a clay statue of Ganesh (a hindu god) towards the beach. I raced home to grab my camera to capture their photos. They were very proud to be getting photographed. I am assuming this must be a common practice to throw items of worship into the sea. It looked fairly heavy and they had to stop and rest several times. The littlest boy of about 5 yrs was very proud to be carrying a very small statue. As you can see from the photo the elephant statue is adorned with flowers and has colored chalk designs on this. This is a very common thing to see these statues adorned with all sorts of decorations.
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Hi Jennifer,
I am Jennifer Dell's cousin, Toni and I sit across from a young Indian guy at RLI Insurance. I showed him your pictures and he explained to me that they were taking the Ganesh to sea b/c the festival was over. He explained that the "statue" was worshipped for several days during a festival and then at the end of the festival it would moved to the sea, so that is what the boys were doing. My friend explained that since this "statue" was "small" that it was probably worshipped by several families in one neighborhood rather than a whole community. Here is a website with some more pictures from a community festival http://www.idlebrain.com/community/etc/2005ganeshnimajjan.html
I sure enjoy reading about your adventures in India-you are doing a fabulous job of journaling your experiences.
Enjoy!
Toni Smith
Chillicothe
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