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Today begins Ganesh Chaturthi, a 10-day festival honoring Lord Ganesha, the God of New Beginnings and the Remover of Obstacles. During this celebration, worshippers decorate their homes with devotional images or statues dedicated to the elephant-headed deity. Offerings of sweets such as ladoo (flour, jaggery, and ghee) are made to him, as depicted in this painting. In some places, at the end of the celebration, terracotta statues of Ganesha are carried in procession to the nearest body of water and immersed. Once the terracotta has disintegrated, it is believed that Ganesha’s soul returns to his mother and father, Parvati and Shiva.
“Ganesha and Sarasvati,” c.1720, made in India
“Parvati holding Ganesha,” 1900–50, made in India
“The Holy Family (Shiva, Parvati, and Ganesha),” first half of the 20th century, made in India
(Source: britishcomedyoverflowing, via )
(Source: oscarwetnwilde, via )
Had you been there tonight
You might know how it feels
To be struck to the bone
In a moment of breathless delight
Had you been there tonight
You might also have known
How the world may be changed
In just one burst of light
And what was right
Seems wrong
And what was wrong
Seems right
Judith Ortiz-Cofer introduced me to a world of literature that I never knew existed before I was in middle school. Her works were deeply personal accounts of a woman who straddled the line between two different cultures, a strong bond to her identity and her ancestry while being able to evoke piercing emotion in both languages. There is so much grace and rhythm to her words. Style that is untouchable. She was a Puerto Rican girl growing up in Brooklyn, both Spanish speaking and a lover of English. She was different from her peers, but that only made her voice stronger. Better.
I didn’t think it was possible to find books about adolescence that I could relate to so well. I just want to thank her for making me feel blessed to be different, that I could be so much more because of my upbringing, that I have the opportunity to be both Indian and American, not just either or neither at all. The straddling of both identities changes my voice, it draws from multiple rich histories and rhythms and virtues, and I love it.
It is a dangerous thing
to forget the climate of your birthplace,
to choke out the voices of dead relatives
when in dreams they call you
by your secret name.
It is dangerous
to spurn the clothes you were born to wear
for the sake of fashion; dangerous
to use weapons and sharp instruments
you are not familiar with; dangerous
to disdain the plaster saints
before which your mother kneels
praying with embarrassing fervor
that you survive in the place you have chosen to live:
a bare, cold room with no pictures on the walls,
a forgetting place where she fears you will die
of loneliness and exposure.
Jesús, María, y José, she says,
el olvido is a dangerous thing.Ortiz Cofer, “El Olvido”