Far away from home, four roommates, one amatuer priest with lots of devotion, on the eve of Ganesh Chaturthi decided to conduct aarti at home to invoke lord Ganesha's blessings. What follows is a narration of the sequence of events. Read it just for fun and it is not meant to hurt anybody's sensibilities.
Two of us, me and sriraj got busy in making prasad. Saurabh, the priest was busy learning the shlokas and the fourth guy, Shubham, started downloading Anuradha Paudwal's ganapati aarti. Just then we realised we did not have semolina to make the prasad, after frantically rummaging in a never opened cabinet, we found some idli making semolina, big difference and so we decided to test our skills at making prasad. Sometimes you just go by instincts. After struggling with the semolina and adding sugar countless times the prasad finally was made and looked yummy. It was time for the aarti and all of us were really hungry.
We lighted camphor and asked shubham to wrap it up fast. Anuradha Paudwal's melodious aarti soothed our senses and we were lost in the aarti until a loud alarm shrieked and made us jump out of our skins. We suddenly realized the holy smoke from the burning camphor was too much for the fire alarm to handle. All of us attacked one fire alarm each and managed to stop it from screaming. Whew! guess lord ganesh saved us and we did not have to evacuate the entire building.
Before we could partake the painstakingly prepared prasad, Saurabh stopped us and asked us to chant Lord Ganesha's names after him. He ttok out a tattered piece of paper with all the names scribbled on it in a hardly legible writing. Here he goes "om ganpatay namah", "om gauriputraya namah", "om vinayakaya namah", "om gajananaaya namah", till this point our amatuer priest managed to pronounce all names and we obediently chanted after him,"om skanda...om skaandaraj....yeh kya likha hain?"...om skandaraajay namaha,"om sarva...om sarvasidhh....yeh kya likha hain? "om sarvasiddhantaya namah"....after stuttering through another 5 names we all burst out laughing...we just couldnt take it anymore....Saurabh's stuttering recitation of Lord Ganesha's names was drowned in our laughter. Finally good sense prevailed and we asked him to recite the names in his mind and we would wait till he finished. Within five minutes he was done. I am sure he was stuttering even when he was saying the names silently and I bet he did not go through the entire list. Till today we tease him for his miserable take at reciting Lord Ganesha's names. He is never gonna ever ask anybody to chant after him.
The day ended on a sweet note with all them simply loving the prasad and then we enjoyed shudh shakahari bhojan prepared by shubham to the strains of Lata Mangeshkars' melodious aarti. I am sure Lord Ganesha's would never forget such a memorable aarti. I believe the Lord Ganesha just loved the aarti and helped me in clearing my qualifiers. Ganapati Bappa Morya!
|