Photo courtesy of Jodi-Ann Strahl, Ripon College.
ACM India, Fall 2008
Pune has an annual festival celebrating Ganapati, the favored deity of Maharashtra. During the festival, every household gets a Ganapati idol and worships him for several day, culminating in an immersion ritual. Various groups and sectors throughout the city sponsor their own, much larger Ganapati idols. This photo was taken after students participated in the city-wide parade, an energetic, communal party which proceeded down to the river to immerse the idols, play music, dance, worship, and throw “gulal” (the colored power).
