The Tales Pensieve

The festivities are back in Mumbai, with the queen of Arabian Sea bedecked as a bride and all around are sanskrit chants, blaring loud speakers, feverish dhol beats, out of tune aartis on mikes and ganpati bappa moriya. Every year, September reminds me of my first meeting with Mumbai’s favourite bappa. My first week in Mumbai and my aunt dragged me on a sleepy Sunday (I hope to get some empathy here) to bow to Siddhivinayaka – Mumbai’s protector Ganesha. I kept urging her about visiting the neighbourhood Ganesha temple and she kept babbling about Siddhivinayaka being very powerful or something like that. But was Siddhivinayaka more powerful than the friendly neighbourhood Ganapati – blind belief or Metaphysics? Seek, seeking, seek-ed……finally the story seeker has the answer now – its his trunk! 

Yes! Do this, when ever you visit Siddhivinayaka next, remember the direction of the trunk of the Ganapati on your car’s dashboard and notice the trunk of Siddhivinayaka while you are inside. His trunk is towards the right and therein lays his extraordinarie power and thus the source of immense adulation. What’s in a direction, you ask? Metaphysics answers that. Lets get to Ganesha’s birth because there lies the secret we seek.

Most of the Ganesh statues we see around us have a trunk pointed towards the left and such a Ganesha inherits the powers of his householder mother with his trunk pointing towards his heart and as an extension towards desires and attachments of the world and thereby lacks the ascetic powers from his father. But the Siddhivinayaka in Mumbai with his trunk towards the right, renouncing the desires of the heart, inherits the powers of his hermit father while with Riddhi and Siddhi by his sides as his wives he also embodies the householder mother thereby also inheriting her powers. Siddhivinayaka represents the true qualities of being the offspring of Shiva and Shakti – he represents his parents in their most potent demeanour – the Ardhanaareshwara form – while remaining as wise and merciful as ever and not to mention cute. Next time bowing to Ganesha take a peek at his trunk, you will know – which side he is on.

By the way, I know of a Ganesha who sits with two full tusks not one and a half, tell you the story in some other post. Do you know what his broken tusk represents?

Tell me your stories about Ganesha; you know I really love stories.