Da Ugly Devil's Heaven

Though I am not that religious but I do respect all Gods of Hinduism. As I live in Nepal, I was brought up in Hinduism environment and told about lots of Gods and Hinduism. They believe that there are “Tettis Koti Devata” that means “330,000,000 Gods.” Quite a lot of Gods, isn’t it? Yeah. Hard to believe but that is what written in big old books of Hindu Gods. Amongst all of them the first one comes Ganesh. Well there is a story that the God of the God, Mahadev, had two sons, and he made this contest of roaming around the universe and whoever comes first shall get the title of being worshipped as first God whenever people have some puja (worshiping). His two sons were first Kumar, who is young and skinny type and his ride was Mayur (peacock) and Ganesh is fat and has a big belly and his ride was Muso (Mouse). So it was quite certain that Kumar is the winner. So as soon as the contest is setup Kumar goes on flying in his peacock, Ganesh just stood up in front of his father, Mahadev, and mother, Parvati. Then what he did was just traveled around his mother and father. Then, Mahadev became proud of his son Ganesh’s wisdom, because Ganesh knows that for a child his mother and father means the universe and he just roamed around them. Clever huh? So from that day whenever we have any rituals the first God we worship and do puja is of Ganesh.

Well there are lots of statues of Lord Ganesh in our country. May be 1000s of them, but since we are mostly around Basantapur, our hangout place, I mainly worship Maru Ganesh of the place called Maru. Maru means “lack of something” in Newari language, and here in Maru Ganesh’s temple the word maru represents the lack of “gajur” (the pointed pinnacle at the top of the temple). I don’t know the exact date but somehow some of my friends and I began to call him, Ganesh Dai. Dai means big brother in Nepali language. And mostly when I got to pray for something I pray to him. Well actually these days I don’t pray for myself, but I pray for my family, my loved ones, and my friends who are in need of his blessings. I am not an atheist but I am not really that much into Gods. I know there must be some presence or something like that I just believe in myself rather than anyone or anything for that matter, but yet as they say you remember God when you are in trouble or in need, and whenever I do, I remember my own big brother, my own Ganesh Dai.