Ganesh Chaturthi

Ganesh Chaturthi is an annual festival whose citywide processions provide both a vivid public ritual and, after the celebration has passed, the practical model for Lin’s plan to disguise Kano as Ganesh. The timing is the point: a familiar sacred image can still draw less scrutiny than an ordinary attempt to move a captive through the streets.

Festival and Procession

Joseph describes the festival as a procession of Ganesh figures ranging from small idols that can be held in one hand to figures ten metres tall. They are pushed through the city to Chowpatty Beach and hurled into the sea amid a crowd approaching a million people. The account makes the festival a mass public event, not a private observance: its images and processions are familiar enough to become part of the city’s ordinary visual world.

The Festival as a Recent Memory

When Lin proposes disguising Kano as Ganesh and wheeling him through the streets on a trolley, Joseph objects that Ganesh Chaturthi ended the previous week. Joseph had attended the gathering at Chowpatty Beach and treats the festival’s end as a reason the disguise may attract attention. Lin answers that he had been there too, and that seeing the procession gave him the idea. His plan depends on the image remaining recognizable after its ritual occasion has passed: he expects people to accept a Ganesha procession without stopping to search it.

Sacred Image and Practical Cover

The proposed disguise turns the festival’s public familiarity into cover for an escape. Lin’s reasoning is that the presence of a Ganesha on a moving trolley would not, by itself, seem suspicious. Jeetendra supports the idea by recalling Ganesh’s association with removing obstacles. The deity’s place in the plan is therefore both devotional and practical: a sacred figure that people would hesitate to challenge becomes the means of overcoming a dangerous obstacle. The episode connects the festival’s recurring procession to an improvised use of its imagery in the city’s everyday streets.