Festival · 2077
The portal of Festivals
Turn a card. Answer all three rightly and this portal is sealed in your sky. New riddles every morning.
May every beginning this year be clear of obstacles, and may you clear the way for someone else.
ॐ शं नो मित्रः शं वरुणः ।
oṁ śaṁ no mitraḥ śaṁ varuṇaḥ ।
Its meaning
Om. Be gracious to us, Mitra; be gracious, Varuna.
Taittirīya Upaniṣad 1.1.1
When, for Sydney
22 August 2077
Shukla Tritiya · until 6:49 AM
Kept on the day its tithi runs at midday (madhyahna).
Do
After the immersion, go back to the river, lake or sea and clear what was left on its bank: flowers in plastic, thermocol, cloth.
Leave aside
Immersing plaster and plastic in rivers. Clay returns to the earth; plastic does not.
Add your name. The card goes as a picture they can read and keep, and the link with it opens as your wish, with the timing for their own city, the verse, and how to keep the day.
Wishing you a blessed Ganesh Chaturthi
Every festival on its right day for Sydney, inside your phone's own calendar, each one opening its page here. It renews itself every year. No account needed.
For Outlook or any other calendar, add the copied link as a calendar from the internet. For another city, open this page for that city first.
A gentle reminder three days before each festival and on its morning, with its timing for your city.
The Moon is four days past new, a slim crescent that sets in the evening; Ganesha is welcomed at midday, while the Sun stands highest.
The remover of obstacles, invited home for ten days and then given back to the water. The immersion is the teaching, not the arrival.
3 stories the day keeps. Turn each card.
Parvati shaped a boy from the turmeric paste of her bath, gave him life, and set him to guard her door. When Shiva came and was refused, the boy fell in the struggle. Shiva, grieving, gave him the head of an elephant and made him first among all: every worship, every beginning, opens with Ganesha.
Shiva Purana, Rudra Samhita.
Shiva and Parvati asked their sons to circle the world. Kartikeya set off at once on his peacock. Ganesha walked slowly around his mother and father and said: you are my world. The race was won by understanding, not by speed.
As the living tradition keeps it.
Vyasa needed someone to write down the Mahabharata as he spoke it. Ganesha agreed, on one condition: the pen must never stop. Vyasa answered with his own: Ganesha must understand every verse before he wrote it. So the great story was written by a god who had to think before every line.
Mahabharata, Adi Parva, in the longer recensions.
2 days kept as one season. Each has its own page.
Ganesha welcomed home at midday, to be given back to the water.
You are hereAnanta Chaturdashi
The tenth day: Ganesha is carried to the water and given back.
Often said
Seeing the Moon tonight brings a false accusation.
The root
The story says the Moon laughed at Ganesha and was cursed, then pardoned at once. Its teaching is never to mock anyone. The tradition itself gives the answer to the worry, freely: hear the story of Krishna and the Syamantaka jewel, and let the fear go.
Often said
The bigger the idol, the greater the blessing.
The root
Ganesha is pleased with a blade of durva grass and a modak. The old murti was shaped from river clay and returned to the river; paint and plaster that do not dissolve harm the water he goes back to.
Free acts, done by you. Kept so far this year: 0 of 3.
After the immersion, go back to the river, lake or sea and clear what was left on its bank: flowers in plastic, thermocol, cloth.
Learn Vakratunda mahakaya and its meaning, and say it before you begin the thing you have been putting off.
Keep the welcome free of plastic and thermocol: clay, leaves, flowers and cloth that the earth can take back.
Each act is free and done by you. Keeping one writes it to your karma ledger with the day's panchang. Nothing here is ever bought, and no act is a remedy.
The youngest
Shapes a small Ganesha from clay with an elder, and at the end immerses it in a bucket of water at home and pours that water onto a plant.
The eldest
Tells the story of the boy at Parvati's door, and how Ganesha was welcomed in their own childhood home.
Everyone
On the day of immersion, each person names one thing they are ready to let go of, and lets it go with him.
Maharashtra
In 1893 Lokmanya Tilak brought Ganesha out of the home into the street, as a public, sarvajanik festival that gathered whole neighbourhoods together. Ten days later the city walks him to the sea calling Ganpati Bappa Morya, come again soon next year.
Homes across India
Ganesha stays one and a half, five, seven or ten days, as each family keeps it, and is then carried to water for the visarjan, the immersion. He is invited, honoured, and given back.
Goa
Chavath: Konkani homes hang a canopy of fruits and forest plants, the matoli, above the image.
Karnataka
Gowri Ganesha: Gauri, his mother, is worshipped the day before, and the son follows her home.
Tamil Nadu
Vinayaka Chaturthi: small clay images in every home, and kozhukattai, the steamed sweet dumplings he loves.
Kept on the day its tithi runs at midday (madhyahna).
The day is chosen by the moment the tradition reads its tithi at, and the times are that day's own, computed for this city. A festival-specific puja window is not printed: those rules differ by tradition and await a scholar's review.
The stories, their sources and the regional customs on this page await a scholar's review. The sky and the dates are computed for your city.