Asteroid Impact: Destruction and Creation - Shiva as Ashutosh.

Long time ago, on one of my first flights from some southern city (probably Bangalore), the plane took me over a range of hills while nearing Poona (now known as Pune). What struck me quite forcibly was that there were features on the hills which seemed as if they were a string of craters stretching over several miles, with each crater --- judging roughly from the height of the plane --- to be a kilometer or so in diameter. When I later trekked in the hills around Pune after that I would imagine that the shapes of the hills resembled those of craters but I was never really convinced even if I am prone to be easily convinced by intuition.

It took several accidents associated with ceremonies for the dear departed and, what can surely be called, heavenly interference, to find out what these features were.

This blog starts with a seemingly innocuous and simple event of immersing a brother’s ashes, and is led by other events which would also be innocuous but, when connected, ends up with a sequence of awareness events, such as the immersion site being a holy sangam (union) of two rivers, the rivers being embedded in a valley formed by the strings of craters I thought I had seen; these vallies were knotted at the end by Sahyadri range; there is a connection with Deccan traps; it ends with the breaking up of Africa, even though I would have liked to continue with extinction of dinosaurs and a phase transition in gravity.

The vehicle of this blog is mainly Google Earth and Wikimapia. “Google Earth is a digital map of our planet made of stitched together satellite images. You can zoom in and out, fly around and inspect the landscape impressive detail. It’s a bit like video game--- except it’s real” says amateur astronomer Emilio González who pioneered this technique in 2006. I was disappointed to find this statement when I had almost finished this blog.

Needless to say, the scope and content of this blog --- since one does not really care to provide refereed manipulations as proof --- is to be viewed (as usual, click on image to expand) as an assembly of Google-earth correlations even if it may be a trifle googly-ed (a googly in cricket is a surprise clock-wise delivery by a anti-clockwise bowler by disguising the direction of finger-spin; the emphasis here is on a surprising twist).

A Beginning Means a Path must Exist.


“The world is round and the place which may seem like the beginning is also the end.”
Ivy Baker Priest, treasurer to Eisenhower

This section may have things a little too personal for a blog. But then, all blogs are expressions of experiential consequences. It starts as departed family and culminates in some surprising conclusions regarding the re-shaping of the earth.

More than a year ago my elder brother, Rangada (I always called him Rangada which denoted his position as an elder in our joint family hierarchy) breathed his last. Bashu, the younger brother had passed away more than a decade ago. Their passing away left me hanging.

I don’t really recollect what Rangada’s name in Bengali was actually meant to be. It could have been Ashutosh or Asutosh. In the old testament it could be a variant of Asher, one of Jacob’s sons, which meant “happy”. Asu is an Assyrian name for the east; Ashur is an Assyrian name for the God of War. In Sanskrit Ashu means quick or fast and tosh is derived from tosa means satisfaction, pleasure, delight. Rangada’s character goes well with “easily satisfied” as the meaning for Ashutosh. As a Bengali from the east Asutosh would mean a happy easterner. Asu also means dew. Lalitha would say Ashutosh means “the quintessential joy of living”. Knowing my brother I would agree with Lalitha's meaning.

We will be more concerned with Ashutosh as Shiva in this blog. As a name of the dancing god, Shiva, Ashutosh could mean anything, including a happy warrior god.

I can happily assert that neither Shiva nor Ashutosh find mention in the Vedas which I have, more happily, not read.

The coincidences may have started, say, with my late mother’s wonderful death in Pune when, surrounded by all children, she cracked a joke about her royal nose, prayed with folded hands above her forehead for the well being of all of us mentioning our names one by one, clutched me and urged me to take her home one last time when I went to bid her goodbye, and passed away quietly and with dignity of the princess that she always was.

After she was cremated and her ashes collected we chose the holy place of Alandi near Pune, for the immersion of her ashes. It was April end of 1994 and Pune was extremely hot. The Indrayani river of Alandi was dry and there was little water to clean worship inputs and worshippers’ outputs, so that Alandi looked an unlikely place for the last resting place of a dear lady.

We drove ahead towards what we thought was the up-stream of Indrayani. We stopped immediately after we crossed a bridge over what looked like a clean river worthy of our mother. We walked down to the river after walking a bit along the banks. The river bed was almost dry. We walked into the stream, emptied the contents (ashes) of her urn, said a few prayers, chanted her favourite Tagore songs, recited a few of her favourite poems, took a few pictures, vowed to come back every year. We did not do that partly because we could not recollect how we had reached the immersion spot and partly because we could not locate that spot on the Indryani later.

When my brother, Asutosh, died on Mahanavami of 2008, I had taken, in consultation with his family and my sisters, a part of his ashes for immersion at an appropriate place on the Ganges, hoping that his final resting place will relieve him of all that he and his family must have suffered in the last agonizing days of his dying. For some guiding (then unknown) reason this was not done and his ashes remained for some time at home in Pune.

Sometime later when Rangada’s ashes implored us to liberate him from his urn, we decided to immerse his ashes next to that of his mother. By some luck we happened to find the immersion spot without a hitch by just following Lalitha’s instincts.



It was (Figs 1 and 2) a warm bright day, with yellow flowers and a strict Buffalo in attendance at the immersion spot. The place was very soothing. Lalitha chanted a few verses wearing a straw hat, Bruno did not bark, Shanta wore a cowboy hat, locals caught crabs from the river bed.

It was during this visit that we realized that the river was Bhima and that the place was very close to the sangam of the rivers Bhima and Bhama. Our choice of place of immersion of mother’s ashes was purely a happy accident!

A year after Rangada’s death we could not attend his shraddha ceremony at Madras (now Chennai). We thought we would say a few prayers at the Bhima-Bhama Sangam. For some reason we could not find our way; we were guided by the local people to the more popular sangam (Fig 3, left; Bhima on the right) at Tulapur where the Bhima meets the Indrayani. This place is very important for us because Ni’s (Nirmala Patwardhan’s) ashes were immersed here. This is where Sambhaji, the son of Marathi manoos' much beloved Shivaji, was murdered by Aurangazeb, the son of Shah Jahan, of Taj Mahal fame.




Three rivers, Bhima, Bhama and Indrayani are wrongly thought --- by the locals as well as on most sites on the web --- to meet at the sangam in Tulapur. It was not the sangam we knew as the Bhima-Bhama sangam, which is about 9-10 kms up stream. There is a temple, Sangameshwar, at Tulapur which is associated with Sambhaji’s arrest by Aurangazeb. Temples ending with –eshwar are Shiva temples, Lalitha informs me.

The Bhima-Bhama sangam also has a spot without a temple that is marked Sangameshwar in the Wikimapia. There are also two temples around the Bhima-Bhama sangam which are called Sangameshwar temples without being marked as Sangameshwar in Wikimapia.

It was again a bright and sunny day when we reached the Bhima-bhama sangam (Fig 4 right) the next day, more by instinct than by logic. There were water lilies and flowering grass along the grass. Lalitha chanted verses from the Gita. Bruno swam in the river before he too sat down to his prayers on the banks of the Bhima.

The Bhima River is named after Bhimashankar on the Sahyadri. The name Bhima here is not the Bhima of the Pandavas (as westernized intellectual ignoramuses like me could conclude), but is said to be an asura, being the son of the rakshasas, Kumbhakarna and Karkadi, in Indian mythologies. The story goes that this boy, like all “good” sons, wanted to wreak revenge on the Brahmins and kings (vedic invaders?) of the Mahabharata lore for killing his parents and ancestors (read native people).

The interesting part is that Lord Siva as Ashutosh worked hard to subdue the demon after the severe penance in front of a siva lingam of the Bhima-persecuted. The sweat of Asutosh’s labour is the source of the river Bhima. Asutosh was persuaded to remain there eternally by the name of Bhimashan.

Maybe we can we draw some consolation that our mortal Ashu’s ashes rests with his sweat?

I still don’t know why Bhama River is named after Bhama. Bheemasena (Krishna) and his (third?) wife Satyabhama are known in shortened form as Bheema-bhama in which case the nomenclature would be an instance of Vaishnavites trying to stamp their presence on Saivites.

Just as an aside, since I like to jump to unwarranted conclusions before warranting it, I am wondering whether the asuras were actually Assyrian invaders and Siva came to the rescue of the pre-vedic but genuine adivasis

Shiva as Bhima of the Bhimashankar Jyotirlinga is associated with few other stories. One of these is associated with Tripura and the slaying of the demon (asura) Tripurasara. Tripura is considered to be weapons of flying citadels and Tripurasura had this weapon.

As true pre-religion Hindus, which means as residents of the Indian subcontinent, we shall not worry about what is the real story.
It’s quite simple, really!
There is no real story!
Those who want a true story are probably those who acquire material wealth from a reproducible invention including making gods.

As long as one is in the realm of the gods’ one has only to be true to one’s god. For us a-religious Hindus there are no limits to the number of gods nor even to the limits of stories associated with one god --- except perhaps that they should have some super-human characteristics --- include pocoman in the list of batman, superman, spiderman, hanuman… .

One of these superhuman characteristics of Shiva as Ashutosh is that he swallowed and kept in his throat the deadly poison which came out first when the gods and demons churned the seas. This churning of the seas could be associated with the beginning of man’s story itself!

Google Flights and Shiva’s Story: Seeing what you want to see.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will. (ssaid to be on the web by Shaw) ``1```

In order to understand Bhima, Bhama, sangam and Shiva (or Ashutosh) better I used Google Earth and Wikimapia. I took off into space ridigon Google Earth and traced the paths of rivers Bhima and Bhama to see their source and see if I could jump to some vedically unforeseen conclusions. After all, these googol resources may not have been available to our gods, especially since they are not mentioned in the ancient texts or puranas.

I (fortunately) have a biased mind and I found stories that gave some basis to these events in Ashutosh’s life as a god.

One of the first surprises as I started on this journey upstream of Bhama is that the terrain revealed features that I have been looking for ever since, I think, I took my first flight to Pune (Poona at that time). At that tie, looking out of the plane I thought I saw a string of rather large craters.

As soon as I saw the Google map features of the terrain on the left (looking down) of the Bhama valley from Google Earth (Fig 5, left) I recognized this “crater-chain” feature. It was helped from my recollections of images that I saw in 1994 with Professor Govind Swaroop in his laboratory computer in Pune; he was the only one looking at images of the collision of the Schoemaker-Levy comet with Jupiter that took place over several days. Rather strangely, other scientists in his laboratory as well as in Narlikar’s IUCAA condescendingly said that they were more interested in cosmological events rather than events in the solar system.

I had heard of a Lonar crater not very far away (~ 320 kms) from Pune. I visited it with Google Earth, and examined it by Google terrain (Fig 5, middle). The crater had a depth of about 150 metres and a width of about 1.8 km. Other neat well-defined circular craters such as the Barringer Meteor impact crater in Arizona, or the Wolfe Creek crater in Australia have similar dimensions (within a factor of two). The web informs me that such craters could be formed by a rocky asteroid or icy comet of 5010 m diameter impacting the earth at 20-50 km/s (speed of sound in steel is ~ 5 km/sec and nearly 0.35 km/sec in air).

The features on the left (as well as right) of the Bhama valley may be fitted (Fig 5 right) with isolated circles representing the diameter of the Lonar crater. These features on the Bhama ridge have a depth of nearly 200 -300 metres which is close to that of the Lonar crater. One requires fitting with several overlapping craters to get the features of the Bhama valley.

Such chain-crater features due to impact of chains of impactors have been examined more seriously by serious earth scientists since the Shoemaker-Levy impact. Due to forces of gravity a crashing asteroid may form a cluster of bundled smaller asteroids in the pre-disruption stage of a Shoemaker-Levy-like impact (see bottom inset of Fig 5 middle) before elongating after disruption (see top inset of Fig 5 middle) with a elongated chain-like feature (from William F. Bottke’s article on “Tidal Disruption of an Asteroid Encountering Earth”). Although the earth’s gravity is too small to create such disruption, we may still persist with the hope that the “asteroid” is actually a “pre-disrupted” rubble pile that could form single elongated holes or multiple holes around the same region of impact. This is what we will propose in Fig 12.

On further Google terrain examination of the Sahyadri ranges, the circular crater-like features with diameter of 1-2 km can be seen (Fig 5, top left). The most prominent of these must be the (said to be fabulous) Konkan Kada at Harishchandragad. The Konkan Kada is more than 600 m deep across 200 m at some point. Such circular features can be seen all along the edge of the Sahyadri ranges and around Bhimashankar (Fig 6 top right). Closer examination of the Sahyadri ranges show less rounded “crater-chain”-like morphology, as seen for, say, the features around Mahabaleshwar (Fig 6, bottom left) or even around our “badi” (Fig 6, bottom right) near Purandhar hills.

These features of the Deccan Trap is thought to be due to “… volcanic flows piled one upon the other”.

Flying over the mountain ranges on Google Earth it is easy to see self-similar features in the various mountain ranges such as those in the Grand Canyon (Fig 7 left), the Siachen Glacier (Fig 7 middle; we should know this terrain since so many of our brave soldiers lost their lives; never mind if it was sometimes merely to increase the profits of arms merchants or to give fake gallantry awards to some officers), or the Gomukh glacier (Fig 7 right) from which Ganga springs.

The chain of “crater-like” features of Fig 5 (left) is common in such mountain ranges (Fig 8) and the differences may easily be attributed to differences in the nature of erosion with time due to differing climes and terrains. The curvilinear structure of the main river bed as well as the nature of side canyons which form the secondary structure in Figs 5 and 6 are seen in the Grand Canyon terrain (Fig 7 left), near Gomukh and other places in the Himalayas or Tibet (Fig 8).

That naturally ends my speculations on the Shoemaker-Levy-like “crater-chain” aspect of the ridges of the Bhima-Bhama valleys, even though (I insist) that seeing the three-dimensional left ridge of the Bhama valley from the plane does distinctly give you the “crater-chain” impression.

Self-similar terrains have been recognized as manifestation of non-Euclidean fractal geometry. A fractal can be split into smaller and smaller parts (or grown into larger and larger units?) with each part being a size-scaled copy of one another. Ideally.

Some large-scale aspect of this self-similarity nay be imagined, I guess, by comparing the shape of the grand canyon fractures (Fig 9, left; a comparison is made with the generated shape of a common spiral fractal geometry on top and a different representation of Yin and Yang at bottom which represent opposite yet complimentary forces.

As one knows, the term fractal comes from the same origin as fractions or fractured. The shapes of natural fractals are only approximately so. A characteristic fractal is the Lichtenberg fractal which is associated with electrical discharges as seen in Lightning or the equivalent laboratory scale electrical discharge in a dielectric matrix (see Sconeridge Engineering at http://205.243.100.155/frames/lichtenberg.html). The track of this potential change in electrical discharges has been seen by Lichtenberg using fine particles which have charges opposite to that of the initial charge. The shape of the curves may be taken as a measure of the way the initial gradient in electrical potential (measured, say, in volts) at a point in an insulator relative to the oppositely charged electrode is reduced by propagating the potential through narrow channels in the medium. Such propagation takes place in a branching or bifurcative manner. Why a bifurcation should take place at all in a seemingly uniform medium is a complex process quite outside the scope of this blog.

Of relevance is the possibility that similar Lichtenberg figures may be seen if one replaces the discharge of electrostatic potential by discharge of some other potential. For example, one may inject a low viscosity liquid at the centre of a tray containing a liquid of much higher viscosity. Similarly, the propagation of mountain ranges may be looked upon as a consequence of the injection of high density (say, by a hammer or missile impact) into a low density material. The flow of the liquid or density would have a pattern similar to that of the Lichtenberg figures.

The fractal nature of such growths is critically dependent on an element of time associated with the change of potential brought about by a change in, say, charge or density or stress, especially when they are in low concentration. During this time there is a randomization of directions of growth. In crystal growth, for example, the key words used to describe the shape in such case are Diffusion Limited Aggregation. For fractal patterns in mountain ranges or propagating cracks one could consider Diffusion Limited Dissipation or decay. There could for example be a sudden increase in volume or stress at a particular point (say, by an asteroid impact) and the volume or stress decays in a fractal manner.

Asteroid impact on planet earth has increasingly become a likely scenario for explaining many of the features of global terrain. One of the more famous of these is the ~ 18 km wide Aorounga crater (Fig 10 bottom left) in Chad at the edge of the Sahara desert. This crater has evidence of having concentric rings has been interpreted as being due to impact crater formation. Indeed, the Aorounga crater has been thought to be part of a chain of impact craters which have been located by radar. Other so-called impact craters are stated to be the pair of Clearwater lakes in Quebec (Fig 10 top right).

There are so many other strange features such as Devil’s Head, Tarso Voon, Tousside Volcano, Mount Tieroko. One may imagine that volcanic-like features such as Devil’s Head (Fig 10, top left, heights varying between 1800 and 2200 metres) could have evolved into the rather flat Aorounga-like features over hundreds of millions of years. There are also chains of such large features of probably volcanic origin but with signs (multiple rings and central peak) of splash of a high-energy impact.

Volcanic activity could also give rise to “chain-crater” features such as those found in the “landscape full of craters” near the East African rift (see Fig 10 bottom right), which has other features such as Ol Doinyo Lengai, the only low-temperature (500-600 C) carbonatite volcano in the world, Lake Natron where the extremely salty water makes it safe for flamingos, Ngorongoro conservation area. Near Arusha at the foothills of mount Kilimanjaro such volcanic conditions must have resulted in the unique three-coloured gemstone tanzanite. It was discovered by a Goan tailor, Manuel D’Souza, in the late nineteen-sixties.

Indeed the bizarre (may be of 450 million years old glacial vintage) topology of the area around Devil’s head (at the centre of Fig 11 left marked by a circle and on the top left corner of Fig 11 right) reminds one of a churning or of the turbulence around Jupiter’s swirling red spot (Fig 11, centre).

This similarity would give fertile grounds for (so far) unsubstantiated imaginations. For example, one may imagine a spiral of faintly defined quasi circular shapes. The spiral in Fig 11, right, is a golden ratio spiral stretched horizontally by 140 percent (arbitrary amount) just as guide to the eye. Are these craters of turbulent origin in a distant (in time) mantle broth with Mandelbrot fractal connotations (could not resist that)?. The so-called Aorounga impact “crater-chain” would then be part of “crater spirals” associated with a whirling crusting soup.

Once one accepts giant-size impact craters there need be no limit to the size of the crater except that the size of the impactor needs to be considerably smaller than the size of the earth. This condition would be usually met considering that the size of the crater is usually 20-50 times more than that of the impactor. These giant craters are expected to have complex structures for radii greater than 2-5 kms and erosion with time further dilutes details so that one may be left with shallow craters perhaps with concentric rings and enhanced plateaus.

Inspiration is drawn from the Manicouagan crater in Canada (Fig 12, top right) and extended to an (imagined) crater in the Grand Canyon “fracture” (Fig 12, top left). The so-called African rift valley region then falls prey to this exercise. Circular features with various diameters are shown (Fig 12 bottom left) in this region starting from an “absurdly high value of ~ 2000 km (~ 12 times the diameter of another famous asteroid impact, the Chicxulub crater in Mexico) with lake Victoria as its centre and going down to ~ 700 kms.

These diameters may seem to be too large for even an immodest/ignorant person.

It seems that there is ability to measure correct to a few thousandths of a millimeter the separation between identical satellites in the same orbit. This ability marks the beginning of a new technology in remote sensing.

This twin satellite GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment) technology has been used in measuring earth’s gravity anomalies. An international team (von Frese et al, 2009) has reaffirmed a 500 km diameter gravity anomaly on Wilkes land which was postulated (as early as in 1962) to have a giant impact crater based on measurements of negative gravity anomalies; this postulate was refuted by air-borne radar measurements in 1970s. von Frese et al say that this, is consistent with thinned crust from a giant meteorite impact, which they conjecture to be 250 million years ago, coinciding with the great extinction of ~ 75% life on earth. Their earlier announcement in 2006 was met with considerable skepticism

As part of their evidence, von Frese et al claim (2009) that there is an antipodal relationship between their crater and the Siberian traps formed around that time. The point antipodal to Lake Victoria, which is the centre of the 1800 km dia impact Africa (Fig 12 bottom left), would be close to the Jarvis island in the Pacific Ocean. Jarvis Island, it seems, belongs to a linear volcanic chain of the same age and have a few seamounts which could be around 5515 million years old. This would be the only way that we may imagine any antipodal relationship between the (imagined?) impact crater centred on Lake Victoria and the hot spot near Jarvis Island.

The features in Africa (Fig 12 bottom right) are thought to be due to mantle plumes (learning, for instance, from an article on East African Rift Valley by James Wood and Alex Guth of Michigan Technological University) formed by increased heat flow from the earth’s mantle which bulges the continental plate which is seen as elevated highlands in the area. Such a bulging of the earth’s crust causes stretching and cracking by fracture and results in the formation of horst and graben structures in rift valleys, which are considered as stretched “extensional structure”.

One of the givens in geology is that flood basalts are formed by volcanic eruptions which coats large ocean floors with low viscosity lava due to a (simultaneous?) combination of several factors such as low viscosity of lava, melting of mantle plume, rifting between continents and melting of the top crust by decompression melting in conjunction with a decompression melting of mantle plume. The Deccan Trap (65 million years ago), the Siberian Traps (250 million years ago) and the Columbian River plateau (~ 18 million years ago) are considered to be regions covered by prehistoric flood basalts as are the maria of the moon.

The great African rift valleys are shown in the bottom right of Fig 12. My (I cannot say “our” since there is no refereeing) conjecture here is that there has been a continental rifting which may have been caused by giant asteroid impacts. The force of such asteroid impacts could have been to tear out part or parts of the continental plate which initiated the breaking of Madagascar/Seychelles and the (south) Indian region from Africa.

By examining the terrain and jumping to school-boy conclusions (which is also good for finding naked kings) we may also decide (see inset of Fig 12 bottom right) that the Arabian plate was also torn away from the continent. This could have led to the formation of the Afar depression which is identified with the Ethiopian rift (Fig 12 bottom right). This depression (Afar triple junction) is thought to be a part of the tectonic triple junction of ridges from Red Sea, Gulf of Eden and the East African rift (Afar triple junction) slowly (1-2 centimetres per year) rifting apart. There also happens to be three distinct ring-like features in the Google map of Arab desert!!

Following this interpretation of the triple union rift of Africa where earlier sea-bed features were ignored (at my peril solely, perhaps) I (not we) extended it to the rifts (fig 13 left) in the south Indian region (Fig 13 middle) and obtained a land mass (Fig 13 right) that could have separated from the African supercontinent after giant asteroid impact(s) and excluded the continental shelf. It has been comforting to note that Hetu Sheth of IIT, Mumbai, has made an attempt to discredit the Mantle plume model for the continental flood basalt (CFB) for the Deccan Trap. One of his objections is that there is little evidence for the Deccan plateau being abnormally hot for 1 million years as required by the mantle plume model. Instead the time scale is thought to be at least 8 million years.

Usual fits (Fig 14, top left) of Gondwanaland begins with attractive arguments that much of the fracture would resemble the football-like (or fullerene-like) truncated icosahedron. This geometry places severe constraints on all other fits since a single specified line or junction anticipates all other junctions. Such a model requires the application of a uniform stress field before the fracture which really implies that the “… supercontinent drove its own breakup” (see J. Sears, University of Montana, USA). It also implies that the supercontinent was in a critical state prior to its break-up such that a relatively (emphasis on “relatively”) “small” external perturbation could have induced the “self-driven” break-up.

The nearly circular outcrop of Deccan plateau (Fig 13 left), supporting a mantle plume model that has a spherical plume head, could as well be due to the effect of a non-plume, plate tectonic model that follows the formation of a circular impact crater because of the impact of a giant asteroid. It seemed to me that impact of a giant group of asteroids (or a series of asteroids) fragmented Gondwana to give rise to the continental rifting usually associated with end of the cretaceous period ~65 million years ago.

The separation of the Deccan plateau and Madgascar could have been brought about by impactors which created circular features of Fig 12, bottom left, which extended present day Africa. For example, the perimeter of the circle in red (Fig 12, bottom left) may be related to the boundary (Fig 14 top right) in blue of the Deccan Trap. A smaller (~ 18km raius) circular “rift-like-valley” is also seen near Bhimashankar (Fig 6, top right)

I have shown a different tight fit (Fig 14 top right) of the Gondwanaland in which the relative position of Madagascar and India are very different from that used earlier (Fig 14 top left). I have also re-drawn the coast-line along the contours of what looks like ridges in Africa and Madagscar, and have ignored continental shelf contours (don’t ask me why, because the blog would become too long; I have no problem in giving un-refereed answers).

Finally, the bottom left and right of Fig 14 shows the two points from where fragmentation could have taken place If Bhimashankar (or Harishchandragad) is associated with the region on Deccan the corresponding place should be somewhere near Mehezangulu in Tanzania. It so happens that the terrain is similar. It also so happens that this place is not far away (50-100 kms) from the Mijikenda Kaya sacred forests in Kenya which has rare plants, animals and birds just as sacred forests of Bhimashankar is reputed to have.

So! Where, Why and What is Shiva.

We may thus look upon Shiva as both Creator and Destroyer as examined in an earlier blog (Shiva’s Dance and the Stock Market: Creative Destruction” 26 Oct 2008). He/she or Ardhanareshwari is the Destroyer of Gondwanaland and Creator of the fractured Modern Earth.

Was the churning of the seas in the violent landscape of Chad?


Was Shiva ever in Africa?

Among the Meru people of Kenya, there is a god called Murungu who “… is a Spirit God, the supreme being, the almighty, all-seer, all giver, master of life and death, creator of all things and of man.” (From TuLu research 208 on Murudeshwara). He is said to be an “exact counterpart” of the Dravidian Murugan who is also identified as Shiva by them because of their association of Siva with red colour (chevvai). Murungu delivered the Meru people from the captivity of the red people. Both Murungu and Murugan have phallic aspects of worship.
Just as pre-vedic Hindu beliefs, Meru people believe in a transition after death to the “living dead” and moves to the “spirit” or “shama” (Shaman) stage when no one remembers him/her.

Is that why we have our ceremonies where we recall our forefathers?

We don’t die? We just make a transition?

And how do we do that?
After we had immersed Rangada’s ashes we took out his favorite collection of Tagore’s verses. When cousin Shanta opened the book the first poem she saw was the one below.

It could roughly transliterate as below (although I am stll to get the appropriate phrase for prosadbani
Have earned my leave, say bon voyage, brother---
My respects I give to all ere I part.
I return back the keys to the door; No longer do I claim a home;
Bid me well your hearty adieus.
For many long days was I with you;
I have given some, I have taken much more;
Dawn’s gone; the night has come; the candle in my coner blows out—
My call has come; I set out that's why.

Ashutosh, like Shiva, lived in those lines; he perhaps guided us as "living dead".

Can we ever fail to remember any of our dear departed?

PS
After posting this blog I saw a simulation of asteroid impact which is impressive. It is at http://apnaview.com/y/iBuKx0Pj3V0/asteroid-impact

A Tale of Two Nobel Promises. Part I: Peace at Speeds faster than Light

For some reason the Nobel Prizes for Peace as well as Chemistry struck similar if different chords in my social awareness syndrome. Both instilled the feelings that arise when one is not prepared for the occasion simply because there was not a kind of déjà vu feeling that comes from experiencing an event that has been anticipated or a sort of “previous experience” satisfyingly fulfilled.

The Nobel Prize for peace has always been known as an award that serves a greater political purpose and has been distinguished by those who did not receive it (Gandhi, for example). Nevertheless, the recipient of the Nobel Peace prize has usually been prévenu even if many times sufficiently maladroit. (We sometimes use French to make sure we may not mean what we say).

I have written two blogs on the Nobel Prizes for Peace and Chemistry, to emphasize the way promises are made and problems in keeping them.

It seems to me that this is the general nature of appreciation of problems. There is the perception, looking at a seemingly vital part of complex machinery, that it holds the key to its functioning --- mal or dys ---simply from its looks.

I am reminded of the man whose pendulum clock had stopped. He took the most visible part of his clock, the pendulum, to have it repaired.


Peace as a Contrast.

One of my father’s constant refrains that has stuck in my mind is the lines from Rabindranath Tagore which goes something like
“I asked for sadness in my life so that I could experience joy
You gave me joy, and now I can only experience sadness.”
In the final analysis, never mind Gandhi, or Tolstoy or Thoreau, our perception of peace is the way we perceive war as the absence of peace. In this thoroughly materialized world, peace is the absence of greed, even if it is sometimes a seemingly innocuous thing as, say, a lady love. Remember the legend of “the not terribly manly” Paris of Troy who wanted as his own the face of Helen of Sparta and launched a thousand ships. This is implied in Tagore’s words
“I would ask for still more,
if I had the sky with all its star
and the world with all its endless riches;
But I would be content
with the smallest corner of the earth
if only she were mine.”
In the case of Obama we have no idea about what is small and innocuous for him. He and his wife have looked gracious and elegant and have caught the approving attention of the fashion industry. As columnist Walter Russell Mead wrote “He (Obama) is at least as smart as Carter, as good on a podium as Reagan, and as good at press wranglings as JFK. But all this and more would not bring him from an Illinois Senate seat to the White House in five years without lady luck.” What one means by “lady luck” is the ability to look convincing on the “idiot box”..

Obama did have considerable luck! Because of his limited public record, he had no negative political record that he could be dragged down with, unlike his main democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Nobody can understand why Hillary did not batter her husband and his cigar habits with White House interns.

Obama, the good looking unknown, did not have to do anything positive to have a positive record. He just had to look like one who could be given the benefit of doubt for a positive record. “Positive with respect to what?” George Bush? Easy! He had such a negative impression! It has been often said that the Nobel Peace Prize for Barrack Obama is because the Nobel Committee acted on the European wish that they could vote in the American election. A piece in our local Pune Mirror of Oct 11 2009 with the by line Veda, Yada! expresses it best perhaps.

All said and done, young Obama should have said no to the Peace Prize.

Obama has not given any inkling of being innocent of the Bush-like manipulation in the months he has been in office. He has worked for everything without working for anything. He has not got Burma’s pro-independence leader Aung San Suu Kyi released nor helped in establishing the identity of the American swimmer that put her back into confinement; the closure of Guantanomo Bay prison ordered on the second day of his presidential term is yet to close. The Gitmo issue is not politically important now for the voters in USA who are more worried about healthcare; Gitmo is surely a positive issue for the peace prize should some Arab influence matter. Nobel prizes require lobbying and an American President could require some Saudi lobbying.

One may even suspect that Obama chaired the 2009 UN nations sessions on global peace to enhance his credentials for the imminent decision on the Peace Prize. There are some who have joked that Obama used the money meant for lobbying for Chicago for the 2016 Olympics to lobby for the Nobel Peace Prize for himself.

It is clear that Obama’s performance as an individual would not have got him the Peace Prize or any other prize, if he did not have the power of an American President. It seems also plausible that it would not have happened with another committee or, at least, another chairman of the Nobel Peace Committee.

The Nobel Peace Committee is headed by one Thorbjørn Jagland, President of the Netherland Storting, an MP from the Labour Party, and, for a brief while, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands. He has been for the last ten years a Vice President of Socialist International advocating far-left policies, has been chairman of the Oslo Center that works with the (Jimmy) Carter Center which intervenes in conflicts and initiate peace talks. He is now elected as the 13th Secretary General of the Council of Europe. The Peace Committee has four other ladies with considerably less public import.

Jagland (Fig 2, top right) is born of working class parents and his family name was changed from Johansen (the same name as the boxer, Ingemar Johansson, Fig 2 bottom right, who knocked out my boxing hero of that time, Floyd Patterson) to hide his background. One of his pictures, seen frequently on the internet (Fig 2, top right) resembles that of a tough scrapper. He also looks like Johansson, the boxer, as well as Daniel Craig (Fig 2 top left) the current James Bond.

Daniel Craig is supposed to have said “The question I keep asking myself while playing the role is, ‘Am I the good guy or just a bad guy who works for the good side?’ Bond’s role, after all, is that of an assassin when you come down to it. …” This is the question all Presidents, US or not, must be asking themselves.

Jagland is also known for his gaffe involving the Norwegian TV Hostess Synnöve Svabö shown on Norwegian Television, NRK, in 1998. The picture was taken while Jagland was serving as Prime Minister. This picture would have knocked an American President out. In Scandinavia it is probably just laughed off. It is said that Svabö 'trapped' the Prime Minister. How unfair! Still we may be provoked to ask: How willingly was he trapped? What are the other kind of “traps” he may prefer?

One wonders what it would take for a Nobel Committee to be influenced the promise of power and of influence of an American President who is still in Office. The earlier American-President Nobel Laureate who got the Peace Prize for the work they did while in office, Theodore Roosevelt (President at 43 years of age, 1901-1909) and Woodrow Wilson (the only President with a Ph. D.), were the head of a country at a time when Europe was at the centre of Power and many countries were in direct conflict with another while jockeying for strategic geopolitical positioning and power.

Theodore Roosevelt, who was an early conservationist, took initiative in opening the International Court of Arbitration at The Hague, which helped in settling many international disputes by arbitration including that between USA and Mexico on California; he directly mediated between Russia and Japan.

It took Roosevelt only one year to get the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his work on the Russian-Japanese peace treaty in 1905.

Woodrow Wilson’s Nobel Prize in 1919 took less than a year since forming in 1919 the League of Nations.

Ninety years later, Obama’s Nobel Prize seems to have come earlier than his Nobel work. In this sense his Nobel Prize may be thought to have come faster than the speed of light.

I remember Professor S. Ramaseshan of Bangalore, commenting on the rate of growth of journals in the library, saying that there would be no violation of laws of Physics if the rate exceeded the speed of light, as no information is being conveyed. The signal from Obama’s Peace Prize has the danger of dissipating into cacophonous noise.

Now that we are letting a Time Machine scenario of a future action determining the basis for a past Nobel Prize, we have an opportunity to suggest a recipe for the Nobel Prize to Obama. Actually we may make as many recipes and eventually hope that a collective wisdom will prevail. It is, of course, not clear, whether we require making it before the next Nobel Peace Prize.

What is the peace we seek? Theodore Roosevelt has written that “peace is generally good in itself … it becomes a very evil thing if it serves merely as a mask for cowardice and sloth, or as an instrument to further the ends of despotism and anarchy …”

I have jotted down a few aspects that could contribute to a good thing by itself. These ideas are based on the distribution of the early Nobel Peace Prizes mopre than a hundred years ago. They were given to founders of societies with various peaceful aims. They were the Red Cross, or the French society for peace between nations, secretaries of International Peace Bureau, secretary of International Arbitration League, President of Permanent International Peace Bureau, President Lombard League of Peace, Founder of Swedish Peace and Arbitration League, and so on.

He could allow Holbrooke to stir up an India-Pakistan conflict (preferably nuclear) before bringing peace and Obama get a Peace Prize (á la Roosevelt) for bringing peace during a nuclear war between the remnant Indo-Pak populations.

Alternatively, Obama could start something, say, on the lines of Foundations for Elimination of International Terror or a Society for the Psychological Dissipation of Suicide Bombers and get his prize á la Wilson.

Times have, however, changed. The more visible threats are those from population increase, global warming and so on besides discounting a large continent splitting asteroid impact. The new, paradigm-shifting proposals could include the following:-

i) Forming a Society for the Banning of Exotic Goods. This will reduce the energy cost of wrappings and packaging and transportation and export-import of non-local food and consumer products born out of advertising.

ii) Forming a Society for Supporting the Predictions of Gaia hypothesis as proposed by James Eprahim Lovelock now 90 years old and looking 60. If he does it fast enough, Obama may have to share the Nobel Prize with Lovelock in Medicine or Chemistry? Lovelock had said “…natural world would welcome nuclear waste as the perfect guardian against greedy developers…” or “radiation … is far less a hazard than is the presence of people and their pets… nothing comparable to deal with that truly malign waste carbon dioxide”.

iii) Create a Society for Natural Living and Death. No mass entertainment, no recorded music, no virtual anything, no flying machines on land or air, no synthesized medicine, no cooking, no lung and heart machine, no ventilator.

From such a viewpoint, the promise (see Wikapaedia) of a future Nobel work for a past Nobel Laureate (who is the vital part of the prize) is that he “… undertakes in the future to render some service, gift or assurance to the others…”. Amen. ! ?

There is also the Jewish Asmachta, which is a conditional promise made with no actual intention of keeping it. It’s not that simple for Jews (see Torah101.blogspot.com, May 19 2006).
“If the people who are meant to use the asmachtas
are already so well versed in halacha
as to be able to use the asmachtas,
why would they need the asmachtas
as reminders..”
Yes, indeed!

What it means is that once you have the Nobel Prize, do you need the actual Nobel work?

Pune Street Scenes V: Ganapathi Bestoweth Happiness

It is difficult to associate the street scenes of Pune during ganapathi puja season as anything approaching one in which one is immersing one’s self in Ganesha solemnly; rather it is one in which one is hoping to be among those on whom Ganesha bestows happiness. The nature of the happiness depends on the individual’s needs at that time and so it is sufficient to be happy to realize that one has been bestowed with happiness. Basta!? The beginning of this blog will have to be a little essaying of the essay kind. The latter half is mainly pictures of the impression kind.

As always, click on the pictures to enlarge and get a better view


To perform a ganapathi puja, one should find a ganapathi; just as a German should find a book of instructions before starting any machine. A purist would make a ganapathi from mud without using a mould. The ganapathi should be installed at home and the family should participate in the worship preferably as a joint family. That should be sufficient cause for happiness. It is also true that such joint family happiness cannot be sustained throughout the year. There could be some other reasons associated with ganapathi which is too sophisticated for me and could require an understanding of theory of particles and virtual photons and octet theory, before one understands gana (as a spiritual particle from Sanskrutkosh, or as a vasu from Panini or as a collection of triyak or tama frequencies from Nighantukosh) and before one understands ganapathi as the nurturer of such ganas. All that high energy is sufficient to clean a home but cannot be sustained at home for more than a few days---of that, one can be reasonably sure.

Most of us Indians are singularly untalented in almost all spheres of creative expression. Not to worry!? Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary General of United Nations, at a time when UN was important to the world, would say this of himself; John Kennedy would call him “… the greatest statesman of the world.” In this modern India where the medicine men in the shape of pharmaceutical companies, and kings (in the shape of non-innovative “industrialists” protected by government licences), and IT czars (who sell the innate Indian skill of counting and logic to gives fresh life to the erstwhile clerks of East India company) pass off originality for the way good “singularly untalented” skills may be sold at cheapest rates to foreign companies so at have enough money to buy foreign arms and other luxuries. Such “entrepreneurs” have probably squeezed all day-to-day skills of ordinary living from the hapless middle class. Few now make any idol. We only worship them. One requires buying images of modern idols (Salman Khan, Rakhi Sawant, her mother) if only to show our worship. It also helps to promote the economy, whatever that means.

Forunately, most Indians are young and unfettered, and happy, without obligations to worship.

The place where the majority of idols is sold is near Kumbharwada near dagdi pul (now Dengre bridge). It is on the bank of the river opposite Shaniwar wada between the Dengle bridge and the new Corporation bridge. The original dagdi pul was at a lower level; a remnant of this bridge is probably seen below the present Dengle bridge in the google map at (http://wikimapia.org/#lat=18.5246811&lon=73.857286&z=16&l=0&m=s&v=9). It could also have been at the submerged structure (http://wikimapia.org/#lat=18.5230534&lon=73.8560629&z=16&l=0&m=s&v=9) in front of the old Punyeshvar temple over which the Darga of Chote Shaikh Salla Baba is supposed to have been built. Dagdi Pul was the main and perhaps only entrance to Pune gaon from other villages during Nanasaheb Peshwa’s time (~1720-1761). It is Nanasaheb (or Balaji Bajirao) who had transformed the Poona gaon to a city during his reign. After the debacle at Panipat, when Nanasaheb lost his son and brother, he felt ashamed to enter the city through Dagdi pul and he built (nearly 250 years ago) another wooden bridge, the Lakdi pul, which would later become Sambhaji bridge.

This stretch of land where the idols are sold still has the old world charm and one can imagine oneself, looking at the trees and the river (near bottom left of collage) to be transported to the time of the Peshwas if one can ignore the traffic and other urban noise (we can do it, incroyably, when we want); one can imagine, people from surrounding villages transporting idols to Pune and stocking them (as on the top right of the collage) to be sold to the residents of Kasbapet on the other side. The idols would have been made of mud and decorated with wooden beads and flowers. They now arrive made from alabaster and painted with enamel and wrapped in paper. As can be seen from the collage there are ganapatis of all colours and shape and size. The popular ones are of Aryan colours (what else?) without becoming white elephants. There are ganeshas who would be like shivaji, or Sai Baba, or other deities, or sit on a dolphin, or be dressed in Shiva’s animal skin, or whatever one fancies (see Fig 1).

Once a purchase is made the idol is transported away by the customer who customarily covers ganapatis face with (red usually) cloth. Ganesha is traditionally a modest family affair and was not meant to be ostentatious. On Ganesh chaturthi or a day before that Ganesha may be seen being carried on a wooden platform by the nominal head of the house with the idol facing the man carrying accompanied by celebrating family members. On reaching the house the idol should face the main door while entering the house. His face is covered all the while till he is installed properly on a platform covered with whole grains of rice.

The private nature of worship changed when the practical minded “freedom” hero, Tilak, strategized to have the Ganesh puja on a public scale (around 1893) so that religious Hindutva fervour would unite the fight for “freedom”; just as BJP would use it for their fight for political power. Tilak would later say that both Hindu and Muslim fervour was important and went further to add (during a Shivaji festival in Bengal) that a great hero like Shivaji could be Mohammedan; just as Advani and Jaswant Singh would have liked to say about Jinnah? They could not say, however, that Jinnah could as well have been a Hindu!


Lokmanya Gangadhar Tilak’s house or Tilak Wada near ABC (Appa Balwant Chowk, I have to find out whether appa balwant is Vasudev Balwant, the father of Indian revolutionaries who took over Pune from the British for a few days, was imprisoned, and who actually died of a non-violent hunger strike in 1893, when Tilak sought a softer option for raising the revolutionary spirit) is itself rather opulent with an imposing door (Fig 2 left), with plaster work (Fig 2 center) reminding people of his various successes (a water drop on my lens due to the rainy season leaves a blur). Tilak himself is seated (Fig 2 right) more prominently behind several ganeshas; a large Honda car, of the deemed Tilak Maharashtra University, belonging to its Vice Chancellor, Deepak Jayantrao Tilak, great grandson of Tilak (who recently switched party from the Congress party of the Lokmanya to the deemed rightist Hindu party of BJP), is parked in front.

It should be important at some time to understand how the public psyche of the average marathi manoos was changed from the transformation from a private Ganapathi puja to a public Ganapathi festival. Acording to Shabbir Khan’s biography “Tilak and Gokhale: a comparative study…”, Tilak appeared to Gandhi “…like an ocean on which one could not launch forth; and Gokhale by contrast was like the Ganges which invited one to bosom. Tilak always lived in a crowd and Gokhale…in small companies.” I suppose the difference was similar to that between Nehru and Lal Bahdur Shastri. One of them was flashy and showy with a published record of statesmanship and scholarship, the other was shy and reticent but still firm and resolute; one was loved the other was trusted. Tilak’s rich and noisy Gaekwad Wada reputation prevailed. The mandals and their flamboyant interpretation of the festival took over for the public gaze instead of the introspective private worship. Agarkar’s disappointment with Tilak “ … no amount of plain writing can set right a person whose one business all along has been self glorification at the cost of honesty, unity, friendship, public duty and several other social virtues.” Like all traditions good or bad such behaviour is typical of many present leading Indian public figures and many of our leading “intellectuals” and “scientists” and “educationists”? The ordinary people would be lethargic in showing such leadership, which they think is often misrepresented as dynamism.

The rest of the blog will be about this flamboyant and noisy Tilak-like part. It has its momentary pleasures. It has also a spontaneity stemming from a very old history of living without in any way being cognizant of the power of the gods…. The celebration is perhaps just a love of the gods’ love of the people’s love. I will not be consistent in emphasizing in italics a word in an Indian language, nor in the various names will I call ganapathi by. There are also a fairly large number of video clips which may not work on clipping on it. I think the video clips add to the content even if some of them may require you to turn the computer by 90 degrees, which may be inconvenient, but is possible with a lap top.

The ganapathi season of 2009 has been the season of swine flu which the ham, bacon and pork industry changed to the H1N1 virus disease. The pharmaceutical industry benefited most from the H1N1 awareness… As they say Faith can move virus and there was considerable amount of mask-awareness with wearing actual masks (used masks being discarded freely in dust bins below Coca Cola perpetrators, Fig 3 left) or a holding a notional handkerchief to one’s face being thought to be sufficient (fig 3 center); at least for those who were not convinced about Ganesha’s protections since the virus may not have been started with his blessing… Finally it was case of embracing Ganesha with peacock feathers (Fig 3 right) before swine flu.


The August-September months of Ganapathi comes after the monsoon when Pune has already been soaked by nearly continuous rain for three months. Even in 2009, when there is a deficit of rain, there is enough wetness for a green moss-like coating on the walls which adds a verdant glow to the buildings. In Fig 4 left we are looking at the roof of the Tulsibag ram mandir while in the center of Fig 4 we are looking at the exit out of the mandir towards the Tulsibag “shopping mall”. This is the robust Pune-ite’s exuberant and practical shopping area that shuns the pseudo-western shopping mall culture. I am reminded always of the Okachimachi shopping area of Tokyo even if there is not the Yamanote line to get there. The third picture on the right of Fig 4 would be seen on old tiled buildings. This one is near one of the older and popular ganesh mandals, the Dagdu sheth mandal on Shivaji Road, near Faraskhana police station. Besides the green cover, this small building has, on the top floor, a computer shop named Computek, a photograph studio and a snacks joint selling vada pav among other Marathi fast food.


Once in the Tulsibag mandir complex during Ganesh festival, brass or bronze images (Fig 5) of Ganesha are seen. Before the chaturthi (fourth day of the moon) not much attention is paid to Ganesh who can be seen in the image on the left reading a book while waiting for his time. More attention is paid instead to Gauri. Gauri is thought elsewhere to be Parvati, daughter of Himlayas and wife of Siva. Gauri, the mother of Ganesha, is the fair version of the benign Parvati, daughter of himlayas and wife of Siva, while the “fearful” (to whom?) Kali is the darker version. Gauri is also known as Kanya Parvathi (the young unmarried Parvathi) representing purity and austerity and worshipped by maidens to become a wife of a virtuous husband.



When one enters the Tulsibag street, one would think that the more important part of the Ganesh festival is that associated with Gauri. Gauri has to be first assembled and then decorated (like the Gauri in the right corner of Fig 6). So one has a variety of Gauri heads, bloused chests, hands and jewels in the shops and it’s a pleasure for the ladies to do unto Gauri, what they would hopefully do unto themselves with more genuine stuff. Like all worships all over the world, the more the public worship the more the private profits.


They would also sell nandi the bull (like the girl under the umbrella, Fig 7 center), an important member of Siva’s family being his vehicle. Other decoration items such as garlands and festoons and balloons are sold happily and bought compulsively for private worships.


It seems that in Pune and some other parts of Maharashtra, Gauri is taken to be the sister of Ganesh especially during the Vinayak Chaturthi which is the time for the Ganesha Festival. Idols of Goddess Gauri (one for puja of Mahalakshmi) are usually sold in pairs (see image to the left in figure 8; four hands in a packet are sold, Fig 6 right) and brought home as sisters of Ganesha two days after ganesh Chaturthi and immersed in water after three days.

Why should Gauri, universally acknowledged as Parvathi the mother of Ganapati, be treated as a sister of Ganesha? It does not seem to matter to the ordinary worshipper, who, in any case, does not seem to belong to the majority class. It probably has to do with the beliefs of the ruling class. This small confusion of whether Gauri is mother of Ganesha or sister of Ganesha need not be of too much concern to us (or even Ganesha) since we require Ganesha’s permission to start the puja in any case.

The people of Bengal generally recognize Lakshmi and Saraswathi as sisters of Ganesha so that there could be a Bengal connection to the celebration of Gauri sisters. It is said that the Gaur Brahmins, who lived on the Saraswathi river, migrated to kanauj during Parshuram’s time, when the river went underground (whatever that means; dried up about the time of Indus valley civilization?), and then went on to Gaur in Bengal where they became kanyakubja Brahmins (Gangulys, Mukherjees, Banerjees and so on) and learnt to love eating fish. Because of water scarcity, Parsuram took them to Konkan where they would get the fish they had come to love.

All the while preparations are on for the public pomp and pageantry aspects of Tilak’s ganapathi festival by the various mandals many of whom started functioning around 1893 at the behest of Tilak. The rest of the blog will be the festival on Pune’s streets, although Hutatma Babu Genu Ganesh Mandal and the Dagdusheth Ganapathi will feature more prominently.

As one comes eastward out of the Tulsibag internal road, the Dagdusheth Ganapathi mandal is to the left and that of the Hutatma Ganapathi is to the left. On the way to the Hutatma pandal near Mahatma Phule Mandai, the street in front of the Suvarnayug Sahakari bank is buzzing with Ganeshutsav (Ganesh festival) activities two days before Ganesh Chaturthi. There were huge elephant parts strewn all over which was being assembled for a gajapathi mahal in which Ganesha was to be installed. Between the legs of an installed elephant (Fig 9 center) sits a lady selling ganapathi puja ware (banana plant, ketaki or screw pine leaves). Behind the lady one can see a tank being built. The elephants are arranged in rows with their raised trunks forming an archway to the temporary palace in which Ganesha is to be installed.


Further down the street, walking northwards, one comes to the dagdusheth mandal’s mahal (Fig 10 bottom right), with intricate finishing touches (Fig 10) being given before ganapathi is installed (in the area at Fig 10 bottom left). This year, because of the depression in the financial markets (signaled by unused advertisement billboards behind the mahal) the scale of decoration is said to have been toned down.


The fun of the public ganeshutsav lies in the procession that takes the idol to the various ganapathi mandals. The more pompous the procession, the less is the fun of the individual participating in the procession. Usually, this procession has a band of followers singing bhajans and dancing for the glory of the lord. Nowadays, these processions consist of a vehicle carrying the idol, which is accompanied by a live, liveried band and a vehicle carrying loud speakers (sound blasters) amplifying the sound mainly from the person playing on a synthesizer so that the noise made by the live band is drowned out. The dance is more boisterous but has the advantage of being spontaneous and suited for the garishly contemporary music.


When we set out in the morning before Ganesh Chaturthi for some household chores we would pass a procession on our Pashan-Sus Road. There was the idol, the vehicle carrying the synthesizer and the band (Fig 11 left). There was no procession of followers or devotees as such except those sitting near the idol. When we came back home a band was playing. They were installing (Fig 12) the idol in a pandal opposite our building (Mont Vert I). Ganpathi’s face was covered with a red cloth. The band had to play during the installation. There were no followers or devotees to dance.








Fortunately for ganapathi bappa, there is an auto-rickshaw stand at the corner where there are some drivers who love to sit and chat and finish some spirits. They are, like the paisanos in Steinbeck’s Tortilla flat or Cannery Row, loved life. For them, the auto rickshaw stand is where they collected and chatted. Among them there were a selfless few who would gladly encourage potential customers to take another rickshaw. If for some reason they had to ferry a customer they made sure that they came back quickly. They celebrated all festivals. When the band struck up they happily joined in, conjuring up some steps that would make Michael Jackson blush. In the first of these (pashansus1.mp4) Ganesha is being installed while his face is covered. In the second (pashansus2.mp4) they are in the process removing the cloth from his face. In the third (pashansus3.mp4) he is properly installed. The noise of the sound blaster would go late into the night. There were to be few if any worshippers at the pandal. The music would, however, go on till 11 in the night if were lucky. The Ganesha was installed by some industrialist or a rich devotee for publicity purposes. So it mattered that the music was loud and the neighbourhood devotees were obliged to consider it a blessing.








When we went back into town later in the afternoon, we were unable to locate any procession of the bigger mandals. On the way we saw an elephant (Fig 11 center) trying to avoid traffic. After searching around near Deccan gymkhana we heard drum sounds emanating from Kelkar road when we crossed Sambhaji bridge (ladki pul). We managed to get a glimpse of the procession (Fig 12 right). There was a happy and exuberant procession (Fig 13 left and centre) with the participation of children and adults, an original dramatic use of soap spray and a lady attendant of the lord (kelkar1a.mp4), the traditional music was provided by typical Maharashtrian Nagaras (flat drums played with sticks), with the Ganapati in a traditional red colour similar to those of the ashta vinayaks (kelkar2.mp4). On our way back there was an enthusiastic group of girls accompanying Ganesha home (Fig 13, right; kelkargirls.mp4).

The installations of the pandals were complete within two days, the most impressive being that of the Hutatma Babu Genu Ganesh Mandal, which had the water reservoirs with lotus flowers and elephants in place (Fig 14 left), the idol properly worshipped by important announced worshippers (Fig 14 centre), while the ordinary worshippers were draped in the auspicious red glow of white Ganapathi (Fig 14 right).


The dagdu sheth mandap (fig 15) did not have its serpentine queues of worshippers because of the swine flu dampener. There were very few masked devotees with even the security guards keeping their masks removed (Fig 15 centre); the smoke of the prayers (Fig 15 right) must have helped in the defumigation.



There were several other Ganeshas installed with their lower right palm having the abhaya mudra (that removes fear) in most cases although some as in Fig 16 left shows the calming Guyan Mudra. Most Ganeshas have a modak in his lower left hand which is convenient because his trunk is usually shown to be towards his left. The more pompous ganapathis usually have weapons on the other two hands, while some more modest ganeshas such as that in Fig 16 right have a book and a conch.







The sounds and activity around the bigger mandals for these H1N1 times is still impressive. The sounds of Ganapati baapa Moriya, so typical of Maharashtra and specially of Pune, are heard around the Dagdusheth mandal during aarti (moriya re2.mp4; fig 17 top left). In the Hutatma mahal the milling crowds are treated to some light traditional music (elephant mandal.mp4; Fig 17 top right). The lighting of the Hutatma mandal (Fig 17, bottom) is rather impressive.


In the midst of all this worship and bestowing of Ganapati’s love on the worshippers, there are those who would love to have the revenues for worship. They sell lotus (water lilies actually) flowers and balloons and usually look (Fig 18) quite famished unless they are serenaded through the night by a flautist. Their miseries must increase when they see the pav-bhaji stalls (Fig 19) with the colours of Ganesha tantalizingly before them


The most spectacular event during the Ganesh Festival is the immersion of the idols. The bigger mandals take about twenty four hours and more. This year the bigger mandals succeeded in doing it in less time (16-20 hours). We should have gone in the night. We thought early morning would have been sufficient. The last stages of the immersion procession (ganapat immersion lion.mp4; Fig 20 and 21 left) involving the smaller mandals was on the Jangli Maharaj Road. People were still dancing in the procession accompanied by very non-worshipful music---the kind of music that modern youth from the rich and the newly emerging rich can dance to happily---that comes with the bestowing of happiness by Ganesha. The traffic was still blocked on the road. The boys (immersion boys.mp4; fig 20 center) probably danced through the night and the girls (immersion girls and pink sari.mp4) probably were fresh if one looked at the lively lady in the pink sari.









As we walked back home, the sindur-drenched revelers (Fig 21 left) were taking some rest. There were no H1N1 virus masks to be seen this morning. The only mask was on the face of a tiger that was being carried. It reminded me of a well known limerick about a lady and a tiger which I have rephrased for the occasion (I must make it better, I know)
Ganesha went masked with his tiger,
`cos of H1N1 virus.
When immersed in river,
He knew flu’ll last longer,
and put the mask on face of the Tiger.


The joys of Ganapathi in a procession has been there for more than at least 250 years and has been shown (Fig 22 left) in a painting from the Peshwa’s school of arts. The music and dance as a manifestation of ganesha’s happiness may have changed a bit but the spirit of joy continues in the gauri as mother grandmother sister daughter(Fig 22 right) as it should. Where else but in the streets of Pune?!