Adieu!

It is that day of the festival yet again. The day to bid adieu to Lord Ganesha. At our place, as per the family tradition, Ganesha leaves with his mother, Gauri. So with Gauri Visarjana, it is bidding adieu to Ganesha as well.

I do not know how to explicate it, but every year on this day, I always feel senti.  It is indeed very difficult to bid adieu to Ganesha. The hardly five to seven days, depending on the tithi's, he is with us at home, evry nook and corner of the home is filled with joy, enthusiasm, hope, Most all positivities fill the very ambience. There is a kind of abundance, an exuberance in the very air.

When he leaves with his mother, suddenly the home feels empty, and one feels lonely-n-lost. For a day or two, I even find it difficult to look at the corner where the idol was installed. To me, it looks incomplete.The sand from the riverbed or a few flowers would pitifully try to fill in  the void. But the grace of that divine existence is no longer there.  Year after year, the Ganesh Visarjan makes me feel hapless.

True, all adieus (the French expression means a dieu, to god, let god be with you) are always blue. Any final farewell makes me miserable; there is a pit in the stomach. The vague and yet certain feel of the unfathomed emptiness is intolerable.  And yet I await with hope ever renewed for the next year. It is always, `pudha chya varshi, laukar ya', come soon yet again.

The next year, too, Ganesha will arrive, and with newer blessings. But Aai would never ever be there again, nor would Papa. Life will go on. But, Oh, that touch of a vanished hand and that soft sound of a gentle soul will never ever  come back to me. Adieus are inconsolable indeed!

pratima@the final farewell brings grief /like a tsunami /     only debris in its wake /           washed away are all the shores/a loss always stinging, beyond all chores.