Under the leaking bamboo canopy of time, life is a clay Ganesha!

I was seven or eight years old. Walking behind my father was like performing an Ashwamedha Yaga: such a fast pace. If father walked ahead and ahead, we had to run behind and behind. In the middle of the path, a hundred people, the exchange of a hundred greetings. Occasionally, if someone stopped to talk, for me they were speed breakers, toll gates, check posts, everything. A small break would be available to stand and relieve fatigue.

We lived in a village one and a half miles from my mother's native place Kamalapur, which is a stone's throw away from the famous Hampi: Hampi Power Camp (HPC). One government school, one government hospital, electricity office, a civil office whose purpose was unknown, a post office on a small mound that separated the two parts of the village called lower camp-upper camp, a government IB (inspection bungalow) for foreign tourists and dignitaries visiting Hampi to stay, lush green—exactly the kind of village described in textbooks, in pictures.

At the edge of the village there was a fore bay (for some reason, we all called it fore boy). It was a canal made to supply water to a small power generation unit in our village. On the bank of that same fore bay, clay soil was available. Every Ganesh Chaturthi, one or two days before, father and I would go there and bring clay. Every time, it was the same Ashwamedha Yaga.

It didn't end there. The brought clay had stones and sticks in it. If mother patiently sieved it all and made it smooth for hours, father would start making the Ganesha idol in the descending evening. Head, trunk, belly... if the weight of all was the same... the art of making those tiny fingers was not easy. By then, Ganesha would seem to have come to life. I would make the mouse. Each year, it would look like a different animal.

Every year, when going to immerse Ganesha in that same fore bay, a sorrow would get stuck in the throat. Water in small eyes that was visible yet invisible. The feeling of sending away a friend, a brother.

Poor Ganesha! How will he go in the depth of the river, in the dark womb, in hunger—such anxiety also haunted.

"After immersing in the canal, Shiva-Parvati come in the depth to take their son away. Until then, so that he doesn't get hungry, we are sending modaka tied in a cloth bundle!"—thus mother would console us. What loving lies!

Years passed. Slowly, I started making the clay Ganesha myself. It would have been nice if he remained a friend; he became God Ganesha. As we grew up, the farewell emotion at the time of immersion faded away.

This year, I took my daughter Samanvi to a field outside the village. Both of us picked and brought clay soil. I made one, she made one Ganesha idol.

At night during immersion, in her mind, in her words, the same sad feeling. I told the same story: the story of Ganesha's parents coming to take him away, and sending him again next year!

Under the leaking bamboo canopy of time, life is a clay Ganesha!

Ganesha melts; becomes clay Ganesha again, drowns in water again, reaches the shore, becomes Ganesha again next year. The lost emotion arises again.