I spent Wednesday (Aug. 31) and Thursday (Sept. 1) shooting (filming) Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations in Bangalore. Ganesh Chaturthi is celebrated as Lord Ganesha’s birthday. Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati, is widely worshipped as the supreme god of wisdom, prosperity, good fortune, remover of obstacles, and also known as the god of new beginnings. Fasting, feasting and distribution of sweets offered to Lord Ganesh are important aspects of Ganesh Chaturthi rituals in India.
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The most spectacular celebrations, I’m told, are in the state of Maharastra, mainly Mumbai and Pune, but it is definitely celebrated in South India. Typically giant idols of the elephant god are carried in processions around the city. I decided to follow a family, the Srinivasans, in their practice of worship on this special day. The festivities started with a puja to Ma Gauri (also known as Parvati), the Mother Goddess to Lord Ganesha on Wed. Aug. 31. The Srinivasans brought a South Indian priest to their home, and I shot the entire puja. That evening me and my camera followed the Srinivasans to the Jaynagar 4th block market, where they bought their eco-friendly clay sculpture of Lord Ganesha, garlands, flowers and much more. It was packed with people shopping to prepare for their home celebration. Many people stick with tradition and buy the painted idols (rather than the clay idols), made of Plaster of Paris. However, the lead in the painted idols pollutes the water when the idols are immersed. The next morning (Sept. 1st) I started the day by filming a giant Ganesha at the Dodda Ganesha Temple, located on the Bull Temple Road in Basavanagudi (neighborhood in Bangalore). This idol is a single stone sculpted into Lord Ganesha about 18 ft tall in height and 16 ft wide. The line was long, all the way around the block, with people there to receive darshan or blessings of the deity in the temple. I stood with the other camera crews and got shots of the giant idol as well as people receiving darshan. That was a true blessing to get to film so close to the idol. I returned to the Srinivasans to film their own Ganesh Chaturthi puja at about 10:30am. Later that day I returned to their home to film the display of 108 Ganapathis (another name for Ganesha). In the evening (around 9pm) the residents of my housing complex walked around the campus carrying their own eco-friendly Ganesha idol chanting a bhajan (holy song) in praise of Lord Ganesha, called “Ganapati Bappa Moriya.” It was hard to film this because it was so dark out and there are hardly any lights in this residential development. Once in a while, a car would pull up with headlights on the idol making it easier to film. Afterward, the idol was then immersed in a body of water. All the residents then gathered in the club house for dinner. I followed the Srinivasans back to their home to film them immerse their own eco-friendly Ganesha idol in water, completing their worship. By immersing it in water, this symbolizes the idol has returned back to the earth. Another way to understand this whole celebration is the creation (the birth of Lord Ganesha), preservation (in the form of puja), and dissolution (saying goodbye, departure), once again into non-existence, of Lord Ganesha.It was an incredible day, and I wish I knew about the importance of this celebration in Maharastra before I arrived in India. I have close relatives in Pune where Ganesh Chatuthi is big, and I could have celebrated with them and get even greater visuals of this festive occassion. I guess being an Indian-American and having a Bengali mother (Ganesh Chaturthi is not as big in Kolkata or West Bengal). Therefore, I didn’t know the significance of this celebration. Please note this post was put together after researching the meaning of Ganesh Chaturthi from various websites.
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Indira S. Somani, Ph.D. is an Independent Documentary Filmmaker. After a 26-year-career as a television newscast producer and broadcast journalism professor, Somani moved to LA and enrolled in the MFA in Directing/Production, Documentary film program at UCLA. Currently in production is a personal documentary about her role as a caregiver for her Mom who battles depression. The film reveals how much Somani and her mother rely on each other for emotional support. Other films Somani has directed and produced include Life on the Ganges (2017), a 10- minute documentary directed, produced and filmed in Varanasi, India, during Dev Diwali, when people from all over India travel there to bathe in the Ganges River. The film screened in film festivals in the U.S., India and Europe and won Best Short Documentary at the Berlin Independent Film Festival, and the Cannes Short Film Festival. Another film Somani directed, produced and wrote was, Crossing Lines (2007), a 30-minute personal essay documentary about her struggle to stay connected to India after the loss of her father and to maintain and preserve her Indian cultural identity. The film won numerous awards, screened in film festivals nationally and internationally, aired on PBS affiliates through NETA from 2008-2011, and has been used by more than 100 universities as a tool to teach intercultural communication in the classroom. Both films are in distribution through New Day films.
Somani’s doctoral research studied the media habits and effects of satellite television on the Indian diaspora, specifically the generation of the Asian Indians in the Washington, DC metro area, who migrated to the U.S. between 1960 and 1972. She expanded her research to study the media habits, acculturation, and social identity of the same generation in the New York-New Jersey area, San Francisco, Houston and Chicago. For the fall of 2011, Somani was awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship to study the Western influence of Indian programming in India.
While teaching at Howard University’s School of Communications from 2012-2021, Somani’s research shifted to study Black Broadcast Journalists and how race had an impact on their success in the newsroom. She has been published in several academic journals and has also co-authored two book chapters.
Somani’s academic career was preceded by 10 years as a television news producer, most notably with CNBC and WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C. Somani has also been a leader of the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), where she has also won several “Outstanding” awards for her coverage of South Asians in North America. Prior to teaching at Howard, Somani taught journalism at Washington and Lee University (Lexington, VA) and American University’s School of Communication (Washington, DC). Somani earned her Master’s in Journalism from the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University in 1993, and her Ph.D. from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park in 2008. Somani is expected to earn her MFA in Directing/Production from UCLA by Dec. of 2022.