Great enthusiasm for Ganapati Cruise after prayers

FREMONT: Ganesha Chaturthi was celebrated as Ganesha Mahotsava at Fremont Hindu Temple with full devotion and enthusiasm from September 18-30. The events started with daily prayers and hawans and on the last day the main attraction was the “Ganapati Cruise”.
Ganapati Cruise means that on the last day according to tradition, the all the idols were taken for immersion in the sea. In India people take their Idols on their own for immersion but here the law is different. According to the law we cannot drop anything into the water without the permission of the concerned department. So all the Hindus bring their Idols to the temple and it becomes a joint immersion Utsav.
The highlight of this Utsav was the new shape and looks given to Lord Ganesha everyday. All the thirteen days the devotees enjoyed the craftsmanship of priest Viswa Prasad Kristipaty. It was his idea to give daily a new look to Ganesha. All the materials were imported from India especially for this. He really had put lots of hours daily in changing the looks and on the top of that performing all the Yajna and Prayers and Aartis daily.
To make it happen successfully the credit goes of course to the Management Team of the temple like the vision of Dr RomeshJapra, Chairman and Rajesh Verma, Co-Chairman, Govind Pasumarthi as Program Coordinator, Deepak Chhabra, as Event Chair. Volunteers also played a big and pivotal role in making it happen.
Manorma Joshi, CFO took the responsibility of encouraging the volunteers. During the thirteen days of Ganesh Chaturthi, the food responsibility was taken by Sudesh Saini, Rekha Malik, Anita and Keshav Chopra. Daily cleaning volunteers were our temple trustees like Veena Birla, Manorma Joshi, Sunita Gupta, Dharminder Dewan, Neeloo Kapoor and Karuna Sharma.
All the priests like Pradeep Archakam, Jhagendra Khatiwada, Bhushan Kesar headed by Pt. Viswa Prasad Kristipati worked day and night for its success. Although the daily Pooja, Homam and other rituals were taken care by all the priests by turn but the volunteers team consisting of Govind P, Balaji Ganesan, Dev Roy, Shankar Radhakrishnan and Sandeep Deoukley were also actively involved in performing their duties as aides to the priests.
All the admins, Rakesh Kapoor, Moti Lal and Harish Babu were also very much instrumental in booking the tickets for the cruise and receiving the Idols from the devotees who were not able to join the cruise.
Apart from the routine bookings of inside and outside poojas and Hawans etc, Preeti Bhojs were also booked for all the days and for both the times, lunch as well as dinner.
The admin office was quite busy and crowded with the devotees. Over 800 idols were booked and about 500 cruise tickets were sold for the cruise for Ganapati Visarjan to go to San Francisco.

– Rakesh Kapoor 
India Post News Service