त्वं वाङ्मयस्त्वं चिन्मय:||
त्वमानंदामयस्त्वं ब्रह्ममय:||
त्वं सच्चिदानंदाद्वितीयो Sसि||
त्वं प्रत्यक्षम् ब्रह्मासि||
त्वं ज्ञानमयो विज्ञानमयोSसि||
(You are the constituent of speech. You are
Joy & Immortal Consciousness. You are Truth, Mind & Bliss, incomparable.
You are none other than divinity. You are knowledge of all types.)
Well, “HE” is back! “HE” who? Ganapati Bappa J! The God of Wisdom, intellect, arts & sciences. One of my favourite
gods (the other being ShriKrishna J). One reason, of course, is the joy, Cheerfulness,
enthusiasm & vibrancy he brings with him.
But personally, what I like most is that, he is the one mainstream Indian
deity who encourages (or say ,is depicted like that) thinking, innovation,
rational behavior & questioning. The aspects which we very much lack these
days L!
Our forefathers were truly great people who understood
the powers of human mind & its humongous ability to imagine, visualize
& think. To appreciate this, as it was customary in those days, they
“created” a GOD. (It was like, if something leaves u awestruck or is an some unexplainable
phenomenon, u make a GOD of it… ex: fire {Agni dev}, Sun {Surya dev}, Air/wind
{Pavan dev} and I don’t know why but SEX too {Kaam dev} J ) Had it been in these days, we would have had
websites, FB fan pages, blogs, twitter handles dedicated to it. But the thought
was clear, that man should use his brains. He should think rationally about everything. But somehow this purpose got lost as the
years went by. I feel, the intention of starting any ceremony/ritual by
invoking Ganesha is that we should perform the said action with full knowledge
of its purpose, meaning, its result i.e. only when our WHYs/WHATs/HOWs/WHEREs
have been answered.
Similarly, he is also god of arts & sciences. Isn’t
it ironical that he is god of science, the branch of knowledge, which is
constantly working to deny its very existence! The message is simple: Don’t
carry any notion, don’t form any opinion, don’t judge anything until you know
everything , explored all possibilities about the subject. In the same breath it
can be said that you should give a thought to other person’s view because he
has perceived the same thing from a completely different position which you
haven’t yet. Respect the other view.( You might be wrong!) That implies… “show
tolerance” (TOLERENCE!ah! the word long forgotten L). Listen carefully, try to understand &
then argue.
Ganapati, as the name suggests, means the leader of
group. When you see different organizations, countries, unions, groups, you
would notice that there is one specific symbol around which the members of
fraternity would assemble their thoughts. It’s the supreme identity/pride of
that group. The symbol can be a slogan, a flag, an anthem or a logo. When you
don’t want a “single human-centric” system, you go for some non-living symbolic
representation to be the central figure.(kind of socialist & democratic system as opposed
to dictatorial & autocratic system) Reason being the establishment might
fail post departure of that person (& invariably it does). Also, the human
errors he commits might cost the organization dearly. In ancient times, when
masses gathered, rather than choosing a person, they opted for GOD &
carried out the proceedings in his name.
We all know that
the Ganesh festival cannot take place without number of people coming together
& working together. A mandal
has people from different background working as a team towards a single goal. A
great example of team spirit. An example of social equalizer (a lesson for
managers on how to handle human resource J) No wonder Lokmanya Tilak, a genius, chose Ganesh festival as a tool to
bridge the gap between different strata
of society, spreading the message of swaraj & providing a
wonderful dais to address social causes . Truly a GOD of masses. (I know it may
seem irrelevant but I think even Karl Marx would have agreed upon such
‘class-erasing’ gathering)Budding leaders often start from such mandals.
(though till now we have seen only political leaders, there are many lessons
for CEOs too. J)
So the concept of Ganesha teaches so many things.
Unfortunately, we pay attention to dumb rituals and glamour. I hope this year
when HE arrives, we start thinking rationally, be more tolerant & question
everything till we are convinced. A true devotee knows his god’s real message.
Till then, GANAPATI BAPPA MORAYA! J
Dedicated to Amit Ganojekar, Aniket Gaikwad, Ashish Bankar, Sayali Shrikhande & Vishal Thakre: The friends with whom i had/have such type of bizarre discussions...mostly TP though... :-p
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