GANESH PUJA.

Ganesh puja ( A ten day festival of Hindu Lord Ganesha ) is the biggest festival in Maharashtra & Madhya Pradesh ( States of India ). We in bhopal used to start the preparation for this festival months in advance.We used to collect money from each and every household in the colony for the festival.As i told you in my earlier blogs that i was quite a mischievous person and a sort of rebel in my childhood and till today i continue to be so.Once one of the family refused to give money for the festival and i got very angry about it and coming out from there house i picked a stone and threw it on the window glass and the window glass got broken and we all ran away.But that person was contractor in my father's company and he complained to my father about it and naturally my father got astonished to learn about my behaviour and got very angry.I came to knew about it from my elder brothers and i was afraid to go to my home but it was late in the evening and my elder brothers cajoled me to go to the home and assured me that my mother has pacified my father and since it is going dark i must go to home and finally i went to my home and quickly went to sleep.
Anyhow coming back to Ganesh Puja,one of our friend whose name was also ganesh used to make beautiful ganesh idols from earth.We also learnt the art from him and used to make small size idol.After that idol used to get dried in 2-3 days and then we used to paint it with different colours.Then we used to buy decorative materials to decorate the pandal and jewellery to decorate the idol and sweet to distribute to all the visitor from the money collected from donations.Not only that after 10 day's of puja we used to distribute sweet to each house who had given the donation to us.I was only 12 years old at that time.There used to be lot of chantings of mantra in the evening aartis and most of the people from neighbourhood used to participate in it.After 10 days of puja ( worship ) the idol of Lord Ganesha was immersed in water.