The festival season has arrived with Ganesh Chaturthi which is being celebrated all across Dwarka on Thursday. People are excited to bring Ganesha’s idol to their homes and societies. The special thing about celebrations in the area is that everyone is participating in it. People from different walks of life are celebrating it together. Dwarka News
Apart from the people from Maharashtra, it is also being celebrated by many different cultural and religious groups.
Maharashtra Mitra Mandal, which is a community of people who hail from Maharashtra, is celebrating the festival inside the premises of True Friends Apartments in Sector-6. The one-week celebrations will be starting on Thursday evening with the “pran pratishtha” and prayers of Lord Ganesha.
Treasurer of Maharashtra Mitra Mandal, Rajesh Dorlikar said, “This will be the 13th year of Ganesh Utsav celebrations in the sub-city. We will celebrate it for seven days and it will end with emotional adieu to Lord Ganesha on 19th September.” According to him, the main highlights of the programmes are Kavya Sandhya by Kirti Kale and Arvind Chaturvedi who are eminent poets from the Marathi Community in Dwarka.
Swati Khanwalkar, a member of Maharashtra Mitra Mandal, said, “There will be a cultural programme by children on 14th evening. Today evening, there will be a musical programme “Karwaan Sunaheri Yadoon Ka” by Dipti Khambete and Devyani Natu and group. "Satyanarayan puja" and "mahaprasad" will be held on Sunday along with painting competition for children. On 17th, there will be food stalls with delicacies of different states.”
At Upkari Apartments, the celebration is being organised by Jagannath Seva Sangh which is a group comprising of people from Odisha. This is also one of the largest celebrations of Ganesh Chaturthi in the sub-city. It will be a one-day event in which people from Odisha will celebrate the festival in traditional Odisha style. They celebrated the festival on Wednesday evening with Odissi dance performance, foods of Odisha and cultural activities.
Shishir Das of Upkari Apartments and Jagannath Seva Sangh said, “We celebrate this festival every year in our own way. This has become a medium of bonding between the community people of Odisha living in various societies across the sub-city and its surrounding areas. Our food stalls are unique as one can enjoy the foods of Odisha.”
At other places, people are celebrating the festival inside their societies and homes. Some families from Maharashtra are celebrating the festival at Radhika Apartments in Sector-18. At Sector-18, the idol of Lord Ganesha was placed in the morning with rituals at Hare Krishna Valley Apartments.
Monika Samajpati, one of the organisers of the celebrations at Hare Krishna Apartments said, “We started the celebrations in the morning but the programmes and prayers will be started around 8 pm on Thursday. Cultural programmes will also be performed by the children.”
At Lovely home Apartments in Sector-5, the celebrations are being organised for the first time. Treasurer of the society, Vishal Gupta said, “This is our first time and we are full of enthusiasm. We will introduce an event during our celebration. In that event, a person from the community in Dwarka working in different fields like art and culture, social service, media, theatre etc would be invited to interact with the children and others and also share their journey of success.”
