My
Experience of the work during Ganeshotsav.
From
the beginning of the course, one of the impressive attribute of the foundation
course, for me, was the work during Ganeshotsav. The work taught me the very
basic thing that, this exclusive festival does not limits itself to Hindu’s
only. All the people from all religions enthusiastically join this festival by
watching & appreciating the decorations, foreigners clicking selfies,
performing ‘Aartis’ to keep this event as Pune’s lifetime identity.
I was a member of team no 56, and to
my surprise I was the only one below 18yrs. We were allotted the ever bustling
Karve Road, outside the main course. But I was lucky enough as my work area
& my college were on the same road. On the first day my college got over an
hour before & so I was on time. The first day was very challenging one. We
were new to the work & also to the public as voulnteers. As soon as we
pitched into the work, Punekar’s were happy about it & almost all listened
to us without any argument. This work with police, by us, to keep the Karve
Road & the Pune on its track during Ganeshotsav was liked by all. People we
saw during our work were versatile. Some citizens seating in cars just showed a
thumb up, meaning to say “Very good”. Some amusingly shouted “THANK YOU” taking
their car window down. People on bike nodded their head with faint smile, and
we assumed that it was a pat on our back. But because of their praises we did
not thought that we are doing very unique work and went to the seventh heaven.
Instead this brought much more responsibilities to do our work more precisely.
As there are two sides of every coin we were bound to get some negative
experiences. Actually these were the experiences which were going to teach us
many things and make us capable to digest the reality. Few to whom we stopped
on signals stared with anger, some went on without caring about our
instructions. Some even told that you should work for at least a month, few
days’ work is meaningless. From this we learnt that our work is only to make
people realize their duty, but not to force them to follow their duty. A very
unexpected question which showed the height of peoples thinking was ’How much
are you paid for this work?’. Also few checked our i-card, enquired about us
& our Parivar. I was very happy to answer such questions with pride.
Anantchaturdashi was the ‘aant’(end) of our capacity to withstand the crowd. I
personally had never spent whole night with my eyes open working with crowd.
But due to this reason I did it & got a very different experience. Every
troop with Dhol-tasha and their Ganapati rammed into us and we caught between
the public & the troop, pushing the public back. As the day turned into
night there was an increase in drunken people. But again as I have said it
earlier this experiences were making us capable to digest harsh reality. Due to
extreme exhaustion, when the Dagdusheth Ganapati came, I thought that it was a
complete dream. But the most important, memorable, motivational &
inspiring perspective of the whole event which catched my attention and which I
admired the most was to see an IPS officer working with us on ground with his team. No other Dhol-tasha troop, Ganapati
of any mandal nor any other thing could catch my attention to such an
extent.
Overall this Ganapati work has given
me a very unique experience, which I would have not got otherwise. A deep
thanks Chanakya Mandal my Pariwar to include me in this Ganapati work .
Advait Misal