Big B performed Maha Aarti at Lalbaugcha Raja

BAPPA TELLS BACHCHAN: PUDHCHYA VARSHI LAUKAR YA

India’s biggest star’s visit to the country’s biggest Ganpati sparked off a crowd frenzy, offering them a double darshan — of their two idols. Big B performed Maha Aarti at Lalbaugcha Raja as part of the Times Utsav Moorti Sanman contest. Here’s what he expressed soon after

    The Ganesh at Lalbaug is perhaps the largest and most visited during the festival of Ganapati. A newspaper quoted that a couple of days back, there were 700,000 that visited the symbol of prosperity, protection, goodwill and tiding. The ‘arti’ at night, around 8.30, is special and hundreds congregate at the location in Parel to be a part of it and witness this most reverent moment. Like all other years in the past, I visited the auspicious moment. Thousands upon thousands of devotees and the grandeur of the divinity. The single-toned concentrated attention to the large figure of Ganesh, by all. No distractions of celebrity and chaos. Just a most pious moment despite the heat and sweat and the difficult breathing conditions crowded within. The blessings, the feet, the flames from the ‘arti’ and that unbreakable faith that encompasses all. There is a sense of purity. Of fulfilment and ‘shanti’. Of brotherly and sisterly community feel, where all gather in one sentiment — children and the elders with devotion on their lips.
    What a wonderful world has been created through religious belief. How beautiful and meaningful the scriptures of the masters of faith — each word written and created through some spiritual learning. How binding this force that believes it. How uniform their acts, how continuous their rituals. How disciplined the followers, concentrated with but one aim, to worship the heavenly bearings of those extra and supernatural bodies that studied and left us with their celestial genius.
    And… how varied today, its interpretations and how violent today, the actions to protect its veracity. The misuse of sentiment and belief; of taking its most potent force and turning it on its head!! This is not what the divine designed, yet it remains with us and divides us.
    I visit the temple, the mosque, the church with similar belief — of sublimating myself before that unknown power and force of each, always in awe of their structure and the godly environment that pervades. The theist human silences itself in its presence, perhaps the only place where it does, without question. Where it seeks, asks, thanks for deliverance. And getting it, returns in stronger belief and devotion, servile in disposition.
    And, if there is someone ‘up there’ reading and listening to us, may it guide us on a path of peace and its sanctity. Of a brotherhood of likeness. Of a combination that propagates togetherness; away from evil thought and deed, from jealousy and discord and from violent thought…

Shankar Mahadevan and Amitabh Bachchan

Big B enters the pandal

During the aarti