ganesha fest

Ganesha festival support

I was out on a pleasure ride just seeing the sights and making a bit of a breeze with my bike to dry the sweat off my body. I headed north on Dod Ballapur Road. Just north of the police academy I saw a little road off to the left with an intriguing sign “Ayurvedic Nursing home and Yoga Center” so I went to investigate. A few kilometres down the road there was a tiny village where a small pack of boys clustered, awaiting passers-by. I was passing by, so they stretched across the road in an effort to wave me down. Normally I would just honk and gesture at them to get out of the way, and then just barrel through, ignoring their adolescent piracy without surrendering a bit of a piece of eight nor any other booty. But something seemed different; one of the boys brandished a kind of receipt book: a raffle perhaps? “Fifty rupees, Uncle. Fifty rupees!” A charity collecting rupees for a local library? I wanted to know what was the cause, so I stopped and we tried to find a few words of a common tongue. They told me they were collecting for a festival in honor of Ganapataye (a.k.a. Ganesha) who is among my favourite Hindu deities. How could I refuse? I still thought it might be a raffle, so I tried to find out from the boys how I would be notified if I won. “What do I get if I give you the fifty rupees?” I asked several of the older boys who had a few dozens English words each. One boy replied “the blessings of Lord Ganesha”. How could I refuse? After giving the eldest a bill and receiving a receipt, I sped off down the road to find the Ayurvedic Center, which turned out to have an organic herb garden directly across the road. I realized then that I should have stayed with the boys and chanted with them the Maha Mantra “Om Gan Ganapataye namaha” so on my way back I stopped again. This time the boys showed me less interest: they had already squeezed a pretty hefty donation out of me (slightly more than a dollar!), and it wasn’t too likely that I had stopped to give yet more money. I addressed the oldest boy and said “I should have chanted the Maha Mantra when I gave you the donation. Will you chant with me?” and then I began the simple universal prayer which means : “Om Ganesha Lord of All Created Things, I call upon you”. The boys’ eyes popped open full wide: they had just witnessed a miracle. I had just paid for a blessing from Lord Ganesha, and now just ten minutes later I was singing a Sanskrit prayer! How could this have happened if not through the direct influence of the elephant-headed remover of obstacles?