Ganesh Chaturthi 2027 (गणेश चतुर्थी)

• Ganesh Puja — the invocation of Ganesha, kept before any new beginning
• Havan — the fire offering, kept on its own or as part of a larger vidhi
• Satyanarayan Katha — the katha of Bhagwan Satyanarayan, traditionally read to give thanks

Ganesh Chaturthi falls on the fourth day of the waxing moon in Bhadrapada, and begins with pranapratishtha — the rite by which the image stops being an object and becomes the deity for as long as it is kept. Everything after it is hospitality offered to a guest.

The guest stays a day and a half, five days, seven or ten, according to the family's custom, and is fed modaks each day. On the last, the image is carried to water and immersed, and the visarjan is the point of the rite rather than its conclusion: the guest is seen off.

It was a household observance until 1893, when Lokmanya Tilak turned it into a public one in Pune — the sarvajanik pandal, open to every caste, was a way of assembling in numbers under colonial rules that forbade political meeting. The great Mumbai and Pune pandals descend directly from that.

The material has become the argument. A clay image dissolves; the plaster of Paris that made the tall pandal figures possible does not, and several states now restrict it. Artificial tanks are provided in most cities so that immersion can be kept without the river taking it.