Ganesh Chaturthi at Tiny Tots

In Pune district, Ganesh Chaturthi is not one festival among many — it is the festival.
For ten days everything else arranges itself around it. Children arrive in September already
knowing the aarti, and a pre-school that ignored it would be ignoring the thing most on their
minds.

Making the murti

Every child makes their own Ganpati from shadu maati — natural clay that
dissolves cleanly in water. Not plaster of Paris, and no paint beyond the water-based kind.

The results are, by any adult standard, terrible. Ears fall off. Trunks droop. Several are
spheres with optimism. They are also entirely the child’s own, which is the whole point
— a bought idol teaches nothing, and a lopsided handmade one teaches a fortnight’s
worth.

Clay is also serious hand work: wedging, rolling, pinching and joining are exactly the muscles
that later hold a pencil.

Aarti

We sing Sukhkarta Dukhharta together, with taal for anyone who wants one, which is
everyone. Three-year-olds are not in time with each other and it does not matter in the
slightest. What they are learning is a rhythm they will carry for life, and that the song they
hear at home has a place here too.

A visarjan they can take part in

Immersion happens on the campus, in a large bucket of water, with the children watching their
own murti soften and go. It is the first time many of them meet the idea that something you
made and loved can be let go of deliberately — which is a surprisingly large thought for
a four-year-old and one they handle better than adults expect.

The clay water goes on the garden beds afterwards. We tell them that, and they check on it.

Shadu clay, a bucket, and the plants fed with it afterwards. The lesson about
rivers arrives on its own, without a lecture.

Ganpati Bappa Morya — at volume, and slightly off the beat.