Chavath is here again….have as eco-friendly a Ganesh Chathurti as you wish and will please Lord Ganesh! (r) Rajan Narayan’s 300-year-old Lord Ganesh at his residence and worshiped daily!

HONESTLY, we Indians feast too much without realizing the consequences it has on body beautiful! Now Shravan is over with there is Bhadrapad with its slew of festivals beginning with Chavath in Goa and Ganesh Chaturthi in Maharashtra. Most popular of festivals evoking the Hindu pantheon of deities most favorite elephant god – Ganesa, Lord Ganesh, Ganpati…by now we’ve heard ad nauseum about the story of how Lord Ganesh was born and the baby elephant head transplant courtesy father Lord Shiva. Don’t know about you but I take all religious mythology ancient and not so ancient with a pinch of salt, just morality stories really for all to imbibe sensibly or insensibly, stretching credibility into a bottomless pit, if you know what I mean!
Frankly, I’m weary of the human fratricidal warfare we do in the name of our various religions, each trying to dominate the other with terrifying weapons of destruction (not the trishul anymore I assure you). Our finite Mother Earth is very vulnerable to kind of very dirty politics we are engaging in currently around the world in the US of A, Israel, Russia, Iran and a few more. The madmen’s cauldron of toxic poisons is overflowing…remember the story of the churning of the oceans in which out came ambrosia amrit for Lord Dhanvantari and also a poison which Lord Shiva drank up to save the world, earning him a blue throat? Interesting stories to make Lord Shiva come alive as a man for his times, ancient times, thousands of years ago, a lot of mirch masala added across time but I confess mahadeo and Lord Krishna are my favorite gods to pay heed too vis-à-vis the mockery we make of moral values day in and day out in our times.
OKAY, no more, this is only to say with yet another festival in town and Goa takes its Chavath seriously, Hinduism’s elephant god is being evoked all around and my first five-star deluxe modak have come in and whoever in the house gets to taste them – the chocolate one I savored had this tantalizing melt of liquid chocolate enshrined in it, to live for once in a year only! I think they’re doing some sumptuously upper crust modak at the Marriott Panaji cake shop, if you want to go check out. Since I know I cannot make them at home I’m looking the Maharashtrian-styled traditional steamed ukdechya rice flour modak for my Lord Ganesh at home (the hubby insists I bathe the idol every year with some gentleness for it’s something like 500 years old and was gifted to him from a Goan Christian home).
You must know we have to offer whatever festival prasad or prasadam we make or buy at the altar of Lord Ganesh at home first before devouring it ourselves…in Goan Hindu tradition entire meals are cooked if a Lord Ganesh deity comes home and friends invited to lunch on the different kinds of greens, pulses and sweets prepared; mainly ladoo (perceived as Lord Ganesh favored treat) and lots of nevri sweet and savory.
An old girlfriend of mine of mine grumbles, “It’s too much, we bring Ganesa home for five days and now I have no one in the family to help me prepare the sweets and savories which we used to do together…all the sisters-in-law, aunts, grannies came over and helped make the ritualistic meals. Now each is now doing their own nuclear family thing in their own home! My ma-in-law has become too elderly to help me but supervises me, I’m all alone to attend to the rites and rituals of making Lord Ganesh comfy at home and for five days, I can’t even say let’s make it one-and-half day now please…my knees hurt me and I have also grown old, can’t sit down and work on the floor anymore, or spend so much time in the hot kitchen space…really it’s too much what they expect from women!”
Well, to do all that I could only sympathize and emphathize and say come over to my home (even if rental) and use my kitchen if you wish, I will help you make the nevri! She said, No, but thank-you for the offer but her ma-in-law won’t like it. Maybe this year they will just buy the ladoo and nevri from Samant Bros down town Panaji which is also my favorite place because Vijaybhai here, is a most cordial friend, they do some very good desi ghee. I buy my plain curry leaf boondi from here as soft Mysore paak or sweet boondi ladoo…no trans fats (hydrogenated fats) used, at least I don’t taste them in what I buy come a festival in Goa!
THIS is the time when I miss my old home in Mumbai that was Bombay the most, but there’s nobody for me there now. The good old days when my mother was around I would be doing the rounds of Matunga and Vile Parle (East) looking for such things as modak, besan and motichur ladoo and some desirable farsaan like ajwain-flecked Bhavnagari ghatia which were much loved and one could also top a Guju buttermilk kadi with them on occasion. Then there would be visits with Vijaya-tai at Vijaya Stores, walkable distance from Vile Parle (East) market station…here favorite buys were godpoli (large jaggery roti), and bhajani chakri and garlic-spiked batatvada for which there were long, long queues post-office hours, when everyone was homeward bound from the railway station here. I think I could happily live in Vile Parle (East) in Mumbai! (Sigh) These days I’m suffering from too much Mumbai-that-was-Bombay nostalgia and if I still had a home there I would go back, enough of life in Goa without a home of my own…here I’m just growing old and older with nothing achieved. Funny or not funny.
THIS is to say if you’re looking for a classy mini fish thali (Rs150) in town Panaji, check out the one they’ve newly introduced at Copperleaf at Taleigao. I dearly wish they also introduce a mini-veg thali or at least a local takeaway tiffin service for seniors in Panaji. I mean a health-conscious thali meal deal a la the Shravan veg thali they were doing (but without the sweets, fryums, extras – only chappati, rice, dal, sabzi, salad, curd, nice pickle and roasted papad, a choice of wheat flour or millet chappati which is hard to find). However, when I asked the F & B manager here quipped “Madam, Goans are not interested in veg food, we did it only for Shravan month, people come to eat the best seafood here at Copperleaf!” Well, thank-you Vinu George for the information, I’ll make a note of that.