The Ganesh Temple in Flushing, New York has become a magnet for every generation of Hindu devotees including the young who may be born and brought up in the United States. This year the youth played an important part in helping draw people to the festival that attracts Hindus in the Tristate area and beyond looking to observe family and community functions as well as renew their faith in all manner of ways. As always, the 9-day annual Ganesh festival drew close to a thousand people daily and more than 5,000 on just the last day for the Rath Yatra Sept. 20, according to organizers.
Dr. Uma Mysorekar, president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America, said it was the largest gathering compared to previous years. And as more people come, she believes the temple and its services have to grow and get better with each passing year. Mysorekar, who has seen to the planning and organizing of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival over many years, told Desi Talk an executive director, Ravi Sivacharya, has been appointed to take on the responsibilities of the institution and guide it. “The temple has to grow, everything has to get better. We must be able to improve our two main – religious and outreach – tasks,” she said. This year, the temple mobilized young volunteers to reach out to the community through social networks like Facebook and Twitter, apart from email, she said.
This Sept 25, Dr. Mysorekar, a physician by training, will be one of 10 faith leaders who will meet Pope Francis at the ‘Multi-religious Meeting for Peace’ inside the 9/11 Memorial Museum. “I will be chanting a Hindu prayer in Sanskrit,” she told Desi Talk, which will be read out in English by another devotee.
The nine-day Ganesh festival went off extraordinarily well, she said with around 700-800 devotees coming in on weekday evenings, and around 200 during the daytime on work days. Weekends brought extremely large crowds numbering in the thousands, Mysorekar said. “And the Rath Yatra which carries Lord Ganesh seated in a 16-foot silver chariot brought 5,000 people at the very least,” she said calculating it by the 10,000 packets of food distributed on that day alone.
“Lord Ganesh was taken in procession every evening by young people and they danced with the Lord,” Mysorekar said. Sivacharya also spent time explaining the rituals taking place at the temple. “The Japam (chanting of mantras) was very energizing and people came morning and evening to participate in it,” she added. The goal was to recite the “Chatur Laksha Moola Mantra” 400,000 times over the 9-day festival. “Every year there’s a difference. Every year has more than last year and depends on what new things we do,” she said. New special alankarams or decorations were done each of the nine days, and the nagaswaram was played continuously. Annadan or food distribution went on day and night. The proceedings were live streamed throughout. This year the young volunteers were key to reaching out through social networking so that even though the festival fell on school days, it did not affect attendance, according to organizers. Apart from several daily poojas, including Gow (cow) pooja, there was a Ganapati pooja by children on Sept. 19.
“The festival draws people from the whole Tristate area and if relatives are visiting, they decide to spend their days in New York at the festival,” Mysorekar noted. “If you’ve seen it once, you want to come back.”
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