Memories of a Bygone Religious Innocence in India

Images of Ganesha courtesy Wikimedia Commons

August 31, 2022

By Asma*

 …and then in the middle of the school year, just like that, it would be time for the festival of Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu God!

 A group of kids - we must have been no fewer than 50, ranging in age from five to 16 - would start a collection drive to buy our very own clay idol of Ganesha. There were Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Parsis among us, joining Hindu friends to celebrate Ganesha in a residential part of Bangalore.

Our plan was simple: Come home from school, throw the school bag away, gather in the tiny little playground between two rows of houses, and figure out how much donations to collect from each of our neighbors.

From our experience of past years, we knew how much each uncle or aunty – as we referred to the parents in our neighborhood - would give, which of them needed a bit of pestering, which house had the most generous parents, and who were the kanjoos (misers). And our cardinal rule: Never ask from your own house. Send your best friend. Your parents will want to make a good impression.

After deciding which homes each of us would visit, we would begin the fund collection drive. Every evening, we would add up the collections to see if we had enough money for our very own divine idol. And soon a day would arrive when we had almost enough money.

This is where the parents would come in. One of the parents would take some of us to buy the idol while he was buying one for his own family. And so, one morning, off we would go, all bathed, wearing clean clothes and giggling with excitement to get our Ganesha idol.

As we kids decided on an idol, after arguing over various choices, we always found ourselves short of the amount needed to buy it. The parent, who took us to the idol-maker, would cover the gap – a proud moment for his child who was with us.

­We placed the idol on the corner of a stage, near our street corner. The stage was prepared by older kids the previous night. It was built using benches, planks of wood and often a study table “borrowed” from someone’s house - much to the annoyance of the parents in that house who knew that their child had bid goodbye to schoolwork for the next 10 days. We would carry chairs from our homes, place them before the stage and stare at the idol, in a happy trance, at a task well accomplished.

Soon it would be evening and time for pooja (prayers), performed by an uncle who was familiar with the rituals. Following the pooja, he would distribute the prasad – bananas, chaklis, ladoos and other snacks. Each day, one of the families would cook extra snacks for the baala illada kothigalu (two-legged monkeys without a tail) as we children were called in those politically incorrect days. Those nights many of us would go to bed without eating dinner because we were just too full.

Between the evening pooja and bedtime came some of the most exciting times of my childhood. We did not have to return home at 6.30 pm to bathe and do our school homework. Our parents too ignored their chores and assembled around the stage to watch the kids recite dialogues, imitating Bollywood’s Amitabh Bachchan and Kannada film star Dr. Raj Kumar, as well as sing popular film songs.

The high point of each evening was a short play performed by some of the kids. Now, what did a bunch of English-speaking children, being educated at Catholic schools, know about religious stories? Our plays were scenes from Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel and other Western fairly-tales mixed with those from the Panchatantra, oral stories passed down from generations since ancient India.

By combining our own clothes, with those from our parents, friends, and neighbors, we turned into princesses and princes, children lost in the woods, evil witches, wise kings, lions, bears, and trees.

And then came the precise date of the festival, the date of Ganesha’s birth. Along with it came the most-believed, non-negotiable superstition in our Kingdom of Children. “You see 100 Ganesha idols on Ganesh Chaturthi, you will score 100 marks in your mathematics exams.” No one knew how and when this belief emerged, but we held on to it tightly. Who wanted to study math when seeing 100 Ganeshas would do the trick?

At 9 am, after an early bath and breakfast, we would gather near the stage and plan our route to securing glory in mathematics. We split into smaller groups and knocked on doors, asking Ganesha Koodusiddhiraa? (Have you consecrated the Ganesha at home).If the answer was yes, we would all barge into the house, invited or not, and spend 30 seconds looking at the Elephant God.

A few of the families would offer us sundal or ladoo or modak. We would quickly grab the snacks and start munching, as we made our way to find the next home with an idol. About every two hours, we would gather to figure out how many Ganeshas we had each seen and who was closest to acing the upcoming math exam.

After ten days of celebrations, it was time to immerse our Ganesha idol. A parent would say prayers and carry the idol to the lake in a park nearby. The walk to the lake, which typically took less than 10-minutes, would take at least an hour. As we accompanied the idol, we danced on the streets while singing Kannada and Bollywood film songs.

None of us wanted the fun to end and so many of us would ask the parent to walk through his or her street. Then, with everyone tired, we would get to the lake. After a quick ritual, the parent would walk into water, up to his knees, and immerse the idol. We children stood on the edge of the lake, somewhat sad and tired but happy, already making plans for next year’s celebrations.

This was how it was in Bangalore in the 1980’s, from my earliest memories as a child right up to the time when I left home for college. Religion and prayers were what happened at home. Festivals were community affairs, solely about food and fun. 

And then in 1990, there was a rath yatra, a chariot ride through India, organized with the aim of destroying the Babri Masjid, a mosque built in 1529 in Uttar Pradesh, and replacing it with a Hindu temple. It ended up being a ride which slashed its way through the heart of India, seeking to divide Indians based on religions, bringing up differences we never felt, breaking us into groups we do not understand, exposing fault lines we never believed existed – and thereby replacing the India we knew with the India we would have rather not known.

An India we lost, so easily, so casually, so simply that we did not even realize it was gone before it was gone.

*Asma, who is based in Bangalore, says she is a sometimes writer, a constant fighter, and a disobedient dreamer.

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