Ganesh Utsav, the 10-day festival that celebrates the birth of the Hindu God Ganesha, ended on Friday. During the festival, many Hindu families celebrate by bringing home a clay statue of Ganesha and worshiping Him. 

“Ganesh Utsav is a festival that is typically celebrated around the end of August and is about worship to Lord Ganesha, who is the God of Knowledge,” senior Ajay Venkat said.  “We typically make Prasad, or food offerings to Lord Ganesha, and many people fast during this festival, though I do not”.

The festival is celebrated by senior Arya Patil through music and prayer with family and friends.

“What we do with my family at least is every night we do prayers for about 10 minutes. We sing songs for Ganesh… for about a week,” Patil said. “Sometime around the end of the week we bring family and friends over and we invite them over to one big event to celebrate Ganesha Utsav. It’s a lot of fun!”

Senior Hiya Sharma also celebrates the festival with lots of her family and friends, enjoying their time together and with Ganesha.

“We call over friends and different families and neighbors, we had around 60 people at our house this year and we invited them and the whole purpose is to celebrate each other and celebrate Ganesh coming to our house,” Sharma said. “The energy is very vibrant like everyone’s there whenever Ganesha’s here. The energy in the house [makes] you always feel really welcomed and everyone is allowed in our house for visiting.”

After 2-10 days, families who bring home Ganesha perform a Visarjan, by immersing the statue underwater. This ritual symbolizes sending Ganesha back to his home and asking him to come back next year.

For senior Samhitha Radhakrishnan, the festival allows her to connect with her culture and roots, along with expressing gratitude.

“Ganesh Utsav is a festival to [celebrate and worship] Ganesha to thank him for my good health, and to ask for my prayers to be fulfilled,” Radhakrishnan said.  “[It is filled with] cooking and eating prasadam, [along with] cleaning the house.”