The rainy season is considered an inauspicious time. The sun is making its journey south; the days are becoming shorter and the nights colder; the earth is wet, worms and snakes are wriggling out, the walls are damp, and there is moss in every corner…it is Chaturmaas, the four months when sages don’t travel, stay indoors and tell the stories of gods. As the rains start to wane, the earth covers herself in green, and brings forth her son, the one who will remove all obstacles as the seasons begin their march towards harvest time. That son is Ganesha, Gauri’s Ganesha, seated on her lap, corpulent, elephant-headed, cute and powerful.
Ganesha is Gana-esha, foremost of Shiva’s Ganas. While the rest of the Ganas – creatures known as Yakshas and Pramathas and Bhutas – are fearsome and forbidding with their unusual misshapen forms, loved, included and understood only by Shiva, their ascetic-master, Ganesha has been able to delight us all – inspiring artists to create and recreate him in various shapes, each one joyful in mood and awe-inspiring in expanse.
No comments :
Post a Comment