Each year, as the monsoon wanes, India’s festival season begins with Ganesha, remover of obstacles, patron of beginnings. Idols of clay and plaster appear in homes and neighbourhoods, worshipped with song, incense, and celebration. For days, devotion builds in colour and sound. Then, as abruptly as it began, it ends. The idols are carried to rivers and streams, immersed, and left to dissolve – abandoned!
To the casual eye, it can look like desecration. Images of broken idols floating in grey water invite outrage online, as though faith itself were discarded. But this mistake lies in confusing vessel with presence. The ritual of visarjan is no careless disposal; it is dissolution by design. The form is given up so that the formless might remain. The seasonal god arrives, is honoured, and departs – to return again. What looks like an ending is in truth the rhythm of impermanence, enacted in clay.
Yet the story is never this simple. Alongside Visarjan’s graceful cycle lie its distortions. Broken idols and faded images, unwanted at home, often end up under banyan or peepal trees. One becomes many, until a heap gathers at the roots. Out of fear of “doing wrong,” responsibility is deferred – to the tree, to the crowd, to the municipality. Passers-by, uneasy at the sight, begin to fold their hands. Incense appears, offerings follow. Soon, what began as avoidance becomes sanctity – a new shrine, sometimes even a temple, emerges.
Here devotion and superstition blur. One practice embraces impermanence, the other clings to permanence at all costs. One teaches release, the other multiplies clutter. Both, however, expose our deep unease with letting go.
This, perhaps, is the real paradox of India’s seasonal gods. They return each year not only to bless but to instruct – to remind us that reverence is not ownership, and that endings are part of every beginning. If we miss the lesson, what remains is not faith but residue: polluted rivers, encased trees, idols turned debris.
The gods themselves are not abandoned; it is we who risk being left behind – clinging to form, unwilling to see the wisdom in its passing.
Where we cling, the sacred withers; where we release, it returns.