THE SCREEN BEHIND THE MIRROR

Ganesha Chaturthi: September 11, 2010

by Tanayut Nuritanon

picture courtesy of kamalkapoor.com

The Ganesha Chaturthi festival is held annually and is one of the most essential Hindu observances Hindu adherents should participate in. The festival itself is mainly to celebrate the birth of Ganesha, the patron of arts and science and the god of intellect and wisdom.
In Thailand, Ganesha Chaturthi is worshiped throughout the country, mostly among people who involve with arts performing or intellectual learning. Ganesha is as well widely chanted for being a lord who brings in good luck and as the “Romover of Obstacles.”

This year, just like the previous years, the festival is established, through faiths and trusts in lord Ganesha, all around the country. Well known spots for the ceremony are the deva shrine in Silom, Bangkok and another ones are in Silpakorn University, Nakon Pathom province and at Hindu temple in Chiang Mai city.

But the place where the controversy begins is at Union Mall, Bangkok.

How do you differentiate a religious place and a shopping mall? It should not be hard to categorize these two apart from each others. As in common belief, while the first one serves as a heart of many religious members who seek for some peaceful place where they can spend time practice their religious observances, the latter one is quite understood to be a spot for teenagers to hang out with friends and get their senses of fashion on. The collision between these two places seems impossible, especially when they offer an extreme difference of style and routine.
But what if the collision really occurs; when a shopaholic meets pilgrims, when a graven image is put in front of Louis Vuitton bag? It is sure something to be talking about. The contradiction is seen obvious; who would think it would be appropriate to place temple inside a so-called living sin? But there are always two sides of the story. Now it’s about time to take a good look at another flipped side of it, being optimistic and realistic, open your eyes with new vision, because sometimes controversy takes a good topic into account.

It is right at the glassy entrance of Union Mall, Bangkok’s biggest street fashion warehouse for teenagers. The annual Ganesha Chaturthi festival is taking place right here; in front of fancy shophouses and surrounded by fashion-101birds and bees. People who visit this mall mostly are the ones you will see on the streets, wearing the most fancy and trendy clothes and seem to enjoy it a lot. It is such a contrast to thinking about how we see another type of people walking into the temple. They wear white sheets and look calm. As peaceful as they prefer to be, few of them would have a second thought on going to a nightclub in a short skirt and getting drunk with strangers. So as Ganesha is here, now there are exceptions, maybe in the reverse form.
The Ganesha Chaturthi festival takes place here every year, so apparently this is not new. There are Ganesha graven images both outside and inside the mall. And just like other places, people come to visit the image for worshipping their god and spend times praying, doing religious rituals and get self-fulfilled with virtue and warmth.

The stage is set. The shrine is set. The Brahmans are ready.

A while after people from all over the place are gathered in the area, mostly dressed in white, the ceremony begins. With Ganesha image being placed on a holy shrine, surrounded by Brahmans, the prayer starts with an unfamiliar voice and tone of southern Asia. It is a frigid, high-pitched hymn that gets everyone in awe of a soul-stimulated meditation and concentration. Around the corner of Ganesha image there was a set of holy foods, brought by disciples and Brahmans, which is considered to be served for Ganesha himself for his satisfaction.
People sit down quietly, as it cannot be heard but viewed. In the midst of Hindu mantra, attendants put palms together in worshipping the Garnesha. Some of them are with eyes closed, some of them also take their children at home to the ceremony, and apparently some of them are yawning and showing sign of boredom like most kids are always do when attending for such things.

Next to the crowd there are images of Hindu devas, such as Shiva and Parvati, as well as other widely-worshipped such as Uma and Brahma. With tags of descriptions providing information about each images, it lets all-around people know the story of each deva. And it goes on nicely, as many teenagers who are intentionally visiting Union Mall for clothe shopping drop by the ceremony and start walking around the deva images, paying attention to the tags. Some of them donated their money in a small jar provided for religious uses. Some of them seem to be very into the festivals.

These people sure are not wearing white. Most of them wear fashionable clothes and colorful bags. Sure these are things we don’t usually see in normal situation. When we say normal situation, we mean when we go to real temple, or other religious places, seeing people performing rituals with particular personalities of religious type of people you can tell. Who would have expected people wearing fancy clothes inside a temple? Sure it is inappropriate and it is prohibited by most of such places, and we have to agree with that. But think relatively, does that mean these fancy-dressed teenagers are with moral-less mind? Does it offer you the idea of being a devil if they wear all black gowns to the party?

If we take a look closely to the sitting crowd in front of Ganesha and the praying Brahmans, we can see many distinction of individual style in there. Some of them are with grey hair, because they are old. But some of them are with green hair, because they like it that way. What’s the difference? They both clam themselves peacefully in front of Ganesha image and they both are doing thing that most religious people believe to be the right thing to do daily.


How do you categorize good people out of bad people? If by using a method of seeing how often they attend a religious ceremony and a drunken party then Union Malls’ visitors may get swept into the latter category. The problem is how can you make sure making merits and praying will generate good behavior for mankind? What if people just don’t have a chance to perform for such things, and they get judged as a bad human?

Somehow this kind of thing separates idealism out of reality. Many people say teenagers nowadays are so away from religious activities, which sometimes true. Many people have suggested the idea of creating a temple inside a shopping mall; of course the idea is blamed to be inappropriate. But for many of us, it is such a bright idea to get teenagers some peace and happiness.

It’s all about chances and what there is inside our minds. The chance we need to grab is the chance to have sometimes evaluate what we are contained, mentally. Sometimes we haven’t released anything out of ourselves in order to get nodded by others as being a good person. Sometimes we cannot even see it until big incidents happen to our lives and we start to sit down and pray. But is that enough?

Social judgment leads public opinions towards particular directions, but there are still plenty of misconceptions that have been roughly stereotyped without considering another side of story that has been left out. Many religious beliefs around the world are consistently focusing on improving the minds, directly or indirectly, by using method such as eschatology or prayers. The question is do people who usually attend the church or temple or whatever – have pure hearts as they are thought to be by those visible behavior?

No one can point a finger on what is right and what is absolutely wrong. People are born differently and we do possess different minds. It always comes to our own self-consideration that will put the fairest decision on every single action we take, every step we make, and every idea and word we release.

As human, we still feel the needs of many aspects for living; money, estates, nice cars or a good looking girlfriend. We are sometimes led by religious beliefs to hide our own superego underneath a surface of morality. The way to nirvana is quite far, so maybe we should be taking the most responsibility out of everything we commit doing for now. As it will generates a good feeling, not only for us, but for the whole world as well.

At the end the questions appear, does it really matter if you are a strict Hindu but you love to dress up like a catwoman and walk on a street? Does it really matter if you are a strict Buddhist but you have no idea about the life of Lord Buddha in his past lives? Does it really matter if you are a strict Christian but decide to earn a living through being a stripper at night club?

This is no bashing to any beliefs in the world, but sometimes people beg to find the answer on what makes us a good person. People say you cannot put shopping mall and temple together because it is not what it has been, so why don’t people doubt about what would benefit individuals if those rituals are performed, but participants still possess dirtiness in their minds, bodies, and souls.