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My Younger Years of Friendship
Growing up in India, Ganesha has been in my consciousness ever since I can remember. I loved Ganesha Chathurthi or the birthday of Ganesha as my grandmother would make kozhukattai, a Tamil delicacy of sweet and savoury filling wrapped in thin, soft melt in your mouth rice covering. I always wondered why this was not a staple like dosa, pongal, chutney and the south Indian thali. That was my point of contemplation as a child. How is it that the dish I love so much is made only once a year? As I grew up my search to find restaurants that would serve kozhukattai began, and when I found a rare one, they were not as good and refined as my grandmas. In central India there is a version of this made, called modak. I eventually learnt to make it from her and relish it.
When we moved from my grandparents home into a gated community when I was three, there was a Ganesha temple with a priest there. As he smashed a coconut on the ground every day after puja, it was great fun as kids to gather the pieces and munch on it. Then we would get sundal in cups made of dried lotus leaves sown together, which again was one of my favourites. Sundal is boiled chickpeas sautéed in freshly grated coconut and raw mango with spices. It is then tempered with mustard and cilantro. It was a healthy snack, high in protein which my mom allowed me to have as much as I wanted. So as kids I still have fond memories of running from my home to go and get the sundal and coconut when the temple bell rang. So much for evolved desires, yet I learnt later that no part of the human life is negated when it comes to celebrating the Indian way. Some kids would gather and do the thoppukaranam which is a particular physical way of welcoming Ganesha into one's life and telling him you were there. We looked at it as marking our attendance in school and becoming smart like Ganesha. We could learn the good from friends, here, our elephant friend.
The thoppukaranam is when you hold your right ear with your left hand and vice versa and squat up and down stretching on your ears. I would always feel energised and ready for my snack post nine repetitions of that. I would see some older people doing a lot more and circumambulating or going around the temple many many times and I knew they had a special prayer or some sankalpa or intention that they wanted to fruition. Or I felt bad for the person, as I thought there was something going wrong in their life, if they were doing so many practices. The thoppukaranam helps the right and left brain integration, due to the crossing, and the pressure on the ears activates the acupressure points. I was surprised, when a man who visits India often took this action and rebranded it as super brain yoga, without giving Ganesha any credit.
Ganesha's Origin
Ganesha is introduced into a child's life in India in the most beautiful ways. I have seen so many cartoons and stories of Ganesha's life that introduce us to the symbolism of what he is. Even the way he got the head of an elephant is in an out of the box way. In war, when his head is lost, they want to bring him back to life. Shiva and Vishnu decide to find the head of the animal that has passed most recently and find an elephant. So the elephant's head is transplanted and he gets all the divine animal spirit powers of the elephant - apart from the powers of being the son of Shakthi and Shiva. Even before he had the elephant head he was not born of Shiva and Parvathis’ physical consummation, neither was he an immaculate conception. Ganesha was born without a human womb, directly from the cosmic womb as willed by Shakthi. There are many versions of his birth, yet the idea is that Ganesha possesses the powers of Shiva, Shakthi and the elephant
From a historic point of view there are many references, much before 2000 years ago, of Ganesha. There is a lot of iconography, carvings and temples built to celebrate him.
Why Does One Invoke Ganesha?
Ganesha is the obstacle to the obstacles. He is invoked in the beginning of any project, be it a business, educational or spiritual endeavour, in India. He is invoked to bring in stability and steadfastness. I was in a forest reserve in Ooty, in Tamil Nadu, India when I spotted a herd of elephants climb up a very steep hill that was almost vertical. I did not imagine that an animal that heavy or huge had that degree of balance. My conditioning when I was younger, was that the more heavy a person is, the more laborious their movement. I forgot that elephants were just made that way and it clicked as to why elephants were considered to have great balance. I was also on an elephant ride there as I saw that the best animal to be on in a forest was on top of an elephant. So the Ganesha energy carries us through our life and helps shift unhealthy conditioning.
Deeper Significance
Ganesha or Ganapathy is the combination of two words. Gana + Isha or Gana + pathy. Both isha and pathy mean “lord.” Ganas are strange looking creatures who hang around Shiva. They can be seen like goblins, distorted creatures, some tall, some short, some snake like and some even being like mutants and other worldly creatures like in star wars with floppy limbs. They are also classified as bhoothas, naagas, yakshas, pramathis, pisachas, raksha ganas, agni betal, chudail... and many more. They did not speak a human language and had a cacophonous language. Other ganas were also vinayakas, guhyakas, dakinis, manushya, deva gandharvas, vidhyadharas, and siddhas. Some also include the latter list, though they are not as negative as the first group.
So Ganesha or ganapathy means one who gives ganas direction. These ganas could be trouble or mischief makers and to me they were symbolic of our unregulated, dysfunctional rogue thoughts that create disharmony. That expressed itself as anxiety, anger and dissatisfaction. Those with too many gana thoughts would create more chaos in a situation than harmony. So as we invoke Gana Isha or Gana pathy he helps us be grounded or rooted despite the chaos either within us or when some crazy maker is around us. We move in an evolutionary direction. That is why Ganesha is also called the Mooladhara Murthi or one who rebalances the root chakra. This helps balance the earth element in our body so we stay rooted and stable.
The elephant is an animal with a very powerful memory. That is why Ganesha is also lord of the akashic records. These records or vibrations hold the resonance of our being and what we have done or undone through our thoughts, actions and words. My grandma used to tell the kids that she knows all that we have done as it is recorded. All she has to do is ask Ganesha. He even wrote down the whole Mahabharatha which Ved Vyasa dictated to him. “So my life would be a cake walk and he is already onto recording it,” I thought as I read that cartoon. He was such a sincere recorder that when the pen ran out Ganesha broke off his own tusk to use as a pen, to not stop the flow of Ved Vyasa. My mom would joke that I had an elephant's memory and the nose of her dog that passed, as I was quite kapha in my younger years and had a good recollection relative to others in the family. Kapha is the quality of earth and water together. When in balance it builds good memory and bones apart from a stable personality.
There are many stories that also demonstrate the out of the box and lateral thinking capacity of Ganesha. So as we chant his sound vibration, we are not just invoking him, but evoking this beautiful elephantine, lateral and solution oriented thinking from ourselves. These are the qualities that will help us navigate this jungle of ganas who can sometimes come into our lives as our own thoughts, or as others' thoughts, when we have weak boundaries.
So let us celebrate his birthday as he brings to us the message of support. We can be the obstacle to the obstacles. We can cultivate stability. Chathur means four, so his birthday falls on the fourth day of that particular month and hence chathurthi. Four is the number of stability. A geometric pattern with four sides is a square. A table with four feet is very stable. We can evoke this energy from within through many tools. However just celebrating his birthday by cheering his name repeatedly, eating protein rich foods like chickpeas and lentils, kozhukattai or modak, savouring smells, drinking lots of water with our elephant trunks and doing things inherent in the festivities in themselves will strengthen this Ganesha energy in us.
OM GAM GANESHAYA NAMAHA
