Ganpati Bappa Morya, Ganpati Bappa Morya , Pudhchya Varshi Lavkar Ya

As I am sitting in balcony and hearing this on – Anant Chaturdashi ( Ganesh Visarjan) many thoughts come to my mind.

Visrajan has its own significance and meaning. As people say everything around us teaches us something it’s just that we have to have that vision unfold meaning !

The entire event of Visarjan brings people from all walks of life together…it creates bonding and team work for spiritual cause. Lakhs of people come out and with all gusto bid adieu to Bappa. Festival throughout instills community value in us.

We all love Lord Ganesha and eagerly wait for him to come to our homes and with his coming entire world around us is charged up. We sing ,dance and with full enthusiasm we make each day special. We are immersed in Devotion and forget about all our worries.

Visarjan shows that even the departure / saying good bye should be celebrated with all happiness. Be positive, blissful and feel God’s grace in everything that happens around you.

The process of Visarjan teaches us detachment , we will be separated from what we love and cherish. No matter how much we love Ganpati Bappa, when the time comes, we have to let it go.

For 10 days we worship with love, devotion and faith. But on Visarjan we ourselves immerse him in water. I think that teaches us to let go and be mindful that what we adore/ create may leave one day. That’s the law of Universe.

Thinking about it differently it tells us to be optimist and keep faith strong as we know next year Lord Ganesha will come again to bless us.

These 10 days are reminder to us to soak ourselves in devotion to Almighty and that should continue throughout our life time and not only these 10 days.

Oh ….forgot my cup of tea …its cold and need to make fresh one.

Over the weekend I was having conversation with my dear friend Krutika and it ended with question to me as to what drives me to do social work.

I had never gone deep  thinking about it but today as I am sitting with coffee I  pondered over it.

One by one thoughts started coming to me and it revealed interesting aspects of myself.

I enjoy coordinating multiple systems that helps to push cause ,issue, projects that I take up. Based on my experience effective coordination is very critical as one has to deal with multiple agencies, professional bodies and ground level people. Again  people  have very different socio, economic, cultural background. I can understand their feelings, grudges and inhibitions. I can bring everyone together without making them uncomfortable.

I get to use my planning, managing and organizing skills. At times it feels like I am running a complex project which keeps me on my toes by forcing me to monitor status, bottlenecks and turnarounds. I have to troubleshoot and find a solution. This drives me.

Problem-solving is my thing and I get to do a lot of that as a social worker. I drive to find way a forward. Often the process is stuck and if seems that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I sit back and think what next and make sure I find a way out.

I can use my creativity in many areas within the social work. I absolutely love singing and professionally sing at various forums. I have experienced that this has helped in many ways – to lighten things up , to break the ice, to motivate others to be vocal and to bring people closer. I particularly remember this incident – we were terribly frustrated by response form one of the agencies and started talking  about giving up issue . And in middle of the conversation someone used word ruk ( means Stop in Hindi) and I don’t know how but I bursted into a song “ Ruk jana nahi tu kahin haar ke…..” and yes it definitely changed the mood.

And yes it give me sense of purpose and fulfillment to make even the smallest difference to even a single person.