yesterday was ganesh visarjan. being an agnostic, i dont believe in practising any religion and hence these festivities basically hold no relevance for me. i just see them as ways to come together and celebrate the good things in life, though i dont agree that it should be restricted to just a couple of days. symbolism has made this world shallow! also, most of these festivities are used to get drunk and forget that life is as much a responsibility as celebration, so i am even more uninterested in all this.

anyways, ganesh visarjan is the ritual of finally bidding adieu to Lord Ganesh, who symbolizes success and prosperity, after ten days of consistent celebration. the clay idols of the deity are then submerged in the lake, hoping that he will return again the next year with more success and happiness. i have been a part of these celebrations more out of my geographical positioning than anything else, for the past 20 years. but this year was different, for i agreed to volunteer for rotract. you see, every year, when people are bidding adieu to the God who gave them all, they throw a lot of food, flowers and plastic with him in the lake. this festival has a huge following, so that there are thousands even lakhs of idols, and the same number multiplied by hundred waste matter that falls into the water bodies every year, thereby cloggng them. so that, when we are bidding adieu to the Lord, we are also saying the funeral prayers of thousands of underwater beings, not to mention the lakes. usually, anything related to the environment, and its misuse is very sweetly neglected by humans, given that they like to live under the impression that its they who rule this planet. but the basic enormity of this festival is such that the changes became too hard to ignore. hence the authorities started a programme wherein people holding garbage bags would scout the lake areas and request people to only submerge the idol ( which is made of clay and so not as harmful as say plastic). for even if there are a hundred dustbins in the area, you can expect the people to still throw the garbage in the waterbodies. actually, i have witnessed ersonally that the only place that isnt neck deep in garbeg here is sometimes the dustbin.

so, yesterday, i was one of the people, holding those garbage bags, getting soaked in the rain for not having bought a raincoat, wearing a rotary cap and requesting people to deposit everything but the idol in the bags. some were rude, some were indifferent, one or two point blank refused! but there was quite a majority that agreed and even willingly came and threw the refuse in the bags. it gave me a sense of extreme pleasure to be able to do something for the environment that had given me so much. but more than that, i was glad that the lake now was not going to turn into an overnight dump, and that we, as the creatures of this planet had somehow avoided that. i would never say that we did a service to nature for honestly, we only avoided what other humans would have done. yet, to do the right thing, was a great feeling.

its really sad that while we have all the time for everything from religion to society to country to gossip, we forget the very fountainhead of our existence, nature. there are so many peopel telling you to respect yout mother country, but none who tells you to respect your original mother, nature. that we cannot even respect the very entity that exists in us too. as we are all a part of nature, of this earth, of this universe. the elements that are around us are in us too. would you dump plastic in your stomach? but you would easily do that in a lake. just because you think that it wont hurt you? but the truth is, it does, everytime you mess with nature, you have in someway harmed your chances of survival. instead of loving this visible source of life, we create invisible sources of pride and joy. we choose to ignore something so beautiful and tragic, but will debate endlessly on everyhting from culture to caste.

all i can say in the end is that, yesterday i was drenched, shivering in the rain, going after people with a garbage bag to collect the waste, shivering and getting dirty, knee deep in muck. i did not have a lamp in front of me, i wasnt praying, i wasnt asking Lord Ganesha to make another year as beautiful. i was far from any sort of symbolism, any ritual, any prayer. yet, strangely, this was the best visarjan in my life till date. i could finally feel a sense of belonging, a sense of pride, that inexplicable peace that was supposed to be associated with this ritual since forever. yesterday was the first time i truly understood prayer, felt one too. a prayer to this beautiful nature.