Vinayaka Chavithi - 2009.

Vakra Thunda Maha Kaaya,
Koti Surya Samaprabha,
Nirvighnam Kuru mey Deva,
Sarva karyesshu sarvadha.

God who has an immense body,
God who has a broken tusk,
God who shines like millions of Suns,
Remove all my problems,
From all that I do and at all times.

Today is Vinayaka Chavithi, the birthday of Lord Vinayaka. Chavithi is the fourth day of any Telugu month and Vinayaka Chavithi is celebrated in the current Telugu month, Bhadrapadha. As in the past, my brother, Dr. Lakshminarsu, my son, Srikanth and I went to Monda market, Secunderabad, at 8:00 A.M., to get clay idols of Vinayaka, flowers, fruits and a variety of leaves for the Pooja. On this day, we always go to the market early as it gets too crowded later. The purchases did not take much time but our walk up and down to the market took longer as we parked our car a little away at the Passport office. We returned home by 9:00 A.M.

In the meantime my wife, Lalitha was busy with her Thadhia Nomu Pooja. She had an option of performing Pooja yesterday, the third day of Bhadrapadha masam or today as Thadhia lasted upto 10:00 A.M. We commenced Vinayaka Pooja at 11:20 A.M and it was completed by 12:30 Noon. In the past I used to perform Vinayaka Pooja also called Ganapathi Pooja by reading from a ‘Pooja procedure/slokas/prayers booklet’ but since few years we are performing Pooja according to a ‘Vinayaka Pooja - Audio CD’. My son, Srinath who is in Birmingham, participated in the Pooja through Skype. As per custom, after the Pooja I picked up the ‘Akshinthalu’ (Pooja-rice grain) that were placed at God’s idol and then placed them on the heads of family members and myself to ward off a curse of Goddess Parvathi. The curse is that anyone who sees the Moon; who laughed at Vinayaka’s personality and movements on Bhadrapadha Chavithi would face problems by wrongful accusations and blame. And at 1:15 P.M., brother’s family and we had a festive lunch together. For the festive lunch on Vinayaka Chavithi, apart from other regular dishes it is compulsory to have four unique festive specific dishes, Paasham, Thummikura pappu, Chinthakaya pachadi and Kudumulu. Paasham is a sweet made with sugar or jaggery and thick wheat-noodles, Thummikura pappu is a green leaf curry, Chintakaya pachadi is a chutney made from fresh tamarind and Kudumulu are made of rice flour and look like flattened button mushrooms and this is Lord Ganesha’s favorite.

My sister, Hemalatha visited us in the evening with their new family member, her daughter-in-law, Swathi, to give Nomulu. Later in the night we went on a long ride in the city and visited three Ganesha pandals. Vinayaka Chavithi is celebrated at home by everyone but from the last 30 years the festival is also being celebrated on a very grand scale by groups of people belonging to a lane, a locality, an apartment, a shopping area, a community and so on. Huge idols of Ganesha in different forms are being placed in well decorated pandals in over thousand places at Hyderabad and Pooja performed for nine days. And on the ninth day the idols are brought out in attractive processions from all-over Twin cities to Hussain Sagar Lake. Here, God is bid farewell amidst loud prayers and requests that he should visit them next year and then the idols are immersed in the lake.