Forty years ago, around the same time of the year, Rajee Mani, a new bride then, started collecting Ganesha idols. Today, the 72-year-old has over a 100 of them in her house ‘Ganesh Krupa’ in Valluvar Kottam. Rajee recalls one of her first buys: “It was raining heavily, and I was alone at home. From a slight opening in the window I saw a man standing outside, waiting for the rain to cease. He had a bunch of Navaratri dolls,” recalls Rajee, dressed in a chilli-red silk sari, designed by her.
Out of curiosity, she asked him about the dolls, and the stranger replied that he specifically had small Ganesha idols. An ardent worshipper of the elephant God, Rajee purchased a mud Ganesha from the seller for eight rupees. Ever since, the idol has continued to remain the centre piece of her pooja room.
God is omnipresent, they say. But at Rajee’s residence it’s true in a literal sense. There is a Ganesha painting right at the entrance of the house; enter and there is a bunch of terracotta idols on the front porch. There are Ganesha forms carved on the door, which Rajee specially bought from Kanchipuram, and on flower pots. Inside, there are Ganesha lamps, five-headed and double-sided metallic idols, Ganesha in dancing pose (sourced directly from a sculptor in Thanjavur), a wooden replica of the ones on temple chariots, a photo of ‘Pillaiyar patti’, and another of the ‘Sivaganga temple’ Ganesha, which was a gift from her father 40 years ago.
Rajee recalls that as a kid, all her “requests to pass in her class tests were fulfilled by Ganesha”. Her dad was an engineer, whose work involved a lot of travelling. “That meant changing schools almost every year. So, to cope with academics, I started praying hard,” she laughs.
The belief continued, even as she did her under graduation in English and Mathematics, in Stella Maris. “Every now and then, I would halt by a street to buy a Ganesha idol for 10 paise,” says Rajee, who also worked as a Math teacher at Vidyodaya for a brief period. Most of the pieces she buys now are from Poompuhar, Victoria Technical Institute and other pop-up exhibitions.
