Few days before to the consecration of a Ganesh Temple in the
backstreet, they started to decorate the streets with colourful lights and
lighting cut-outs of Ganesh and Murugan idols at the street corners and
junctions as a led to the temple. It’s a small temple in size of 8x12 sq.ft and
consecration is a custom take place at every temple once in 12 years and this’s
the first time (I think so) after the temple was rebuilt with new Ganesh idol.
The original idol/statue of the temple was brought by my grandfather and his
friends after finding it from a village pond but that Ganesh idol was little
damaged at the limb and was the talk of changing the idol as people believed
that a damaged idol shouldn’t be worshipped. Since we moved out of the area in
Dec 2005, I don’t remember when the idol was changed and I hadn’t got to take
the backstreet often until we moved back to same in 2015.
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| Murugan decor opp. to our house |
The backstreet and the Ganesh temple hold many memories related to my
childhood and friends and whose play area were mostly around the temple and mud
streets. Since my two best friends came from backstreet, we hit often the
streets after back from school and on holidays and I have walked countless
miles over there despite my difficulty in walk. There are some guys (from
backstreet) take response to conduct festivals and Ganesh Chaturthi themselves
by collecting money from the residence – whose amount mostly go to their
pockets – to conduct special pujas and cart procession at night. Last year the
Ganesh Chaturthi wasn’t celebrated due to the consecration ceremony, the
collection of money this time was heavier or 2-3 fold higher than the Ganesh
Chaturthi collections.
Coming to the post, the consecration took place on Sunday morning and
there were enough crowds and the area was in festival mood with traditional instruments (my favourite Nadeswaram and Thavil, like in picture above) playing loud through the
loudspeakers along the chanting of mantras by priests. They played devotional
songs now and then but glad they weren’t disturbing kind and only lights were
decorated our street to look colourful for few days. From the photos you could
see the glittering lights and cut-outs placed on our street – right opp. to our
house was Murugar decor and at the left corner was Ganesh on seated position –
and couple of shots on the night cart procession. Usually they make loud
crackers and I find it terrible to take photos on the procession when one blast
close to us, but this time they did blast fewer crackers (perhaps because of Supreme
Court order) and the cart procession went off peaceful with light instruments
play. All the photos were shot from my balcony.
