Wealthy Bappa

This year during the Ganesh Utsav I had visited a lot of my relatives. One of the homes that I had visited was one of my dad's cousins - Sumit Uncle.

This year I went with my parents to visit Sumit uncle's home for the Ganesh puja. When I went to his place I was impressed with the decoration that they had done for the pooja. It was fairly simple. A simple cutout of lotus made of the MDF board. The Lotus was painted in the shades of pink in a marbled pattern. At the edge of the lotus they had placed a strip of LED lights. It looked very simple but elegant. But the highlight was the ornaments.

When I looked at the idol of Ganpati Bappa I noticed that bappa had been covered with various ornaments. I saw that the ornaments were glittering. After I prayed I took the pictures of the decoration and the idol. While I was admiring the decoration and the idol Sumit uncle asked me, "have you seen the ornaments on the idol?"

"Yes I did. The ornaments by the design look vintage," I simply mentioned what I had observed.

Sumit uncle looked delighted with my keen observation, "good observation I must say. The jewellery is decades old. The tradition was initiated by my grandfather. 120 years ago my grandfather decided to worship Bappa every year on the Ganesh Chaturthi. Every year people would come to our place and when they would pray they would place some money in front of bappa. We would collect the money and with that money we would try to create one gold ornament for Bappa. This is how these ornaments had been created. Everything has been created from the money that other people placed in front of bappa out of the pure faith".

I looked at the idol once again. I was in a complete awe thinking about how much money had been placed in front of Bappa over these years. While the gold rate are soaring high in today's times looking at the ornament there valuation would have been closer to 10 lakhs. While the ornaments have been placed on bappa's Idol out of pure devotion I feared that what if a visitor tried to flick it. But I decided to shrug off this fear.

I was lost in my thoughts when uncle decided to speak his heart out, "this is a tradition that has been going on for over 120 years. Unfortunately most of the children and grandchildren are now settled abroad. In my family itself I am the only one who is continuing the tradition. Your cousins in the US would not be able to continue with our tradition. Me and other three uncles taking turns to worship Bappa every year".

I felt the shift in the atmosphere. The room that was filled with happiness and devotion suddenly the mood changed to sadness. I felt my uncles emotion of missing his children. I completely understood his feeling of uncertainty of continuing of a lifelong family tradition.

This was the story of every family. The current generation is settled abroad or in different cities. The busy schedule is not allowing them to actively participate in family traditions. The next generation is almost disinterested. Almost every family is facing this problem with the dwindling population within the family to continue with any traditions. I felt really sad and disheartened to see the dissolution of family traditions. I prayed to Bappa to show us a way out.