Manasi Joshi Roy on bringing back Ganeshotsav after 2015: ‘It was time to…’

Pic/Manasi Joshi Roy via Instagram

Actress Manasi Joshi Roy, who essays the titular role in the television show ‘Lakshmi Niwas', has shared that she once consumed by the peripherals of Ganeshotsav that she felt she was losing connection with Lord Ganpati.

The actress said that she and her husband stopped celebrating Ganeshotsav until 2023, when her husband Rohit Roy insisted on bringing Ganpati home.

She told IANS, "Year after year Lord Ganpati came to our house. From 1.5 days we started keeping his idol for 3 days & the scope of the whole thing kept increasing. It was an endless flow of people, food, preparations & then suddenly one year I felt that I has lost my connect with HIM because I was too busy with the peripherals. When I mentioned this to my sister in law who is more religious than me & has been having HIM at home way before we started… she said "We are so busy with everything that I couldn't have a conversation with my God".

That's when it struck her that the celebrations have turned into a big social event. She said that she somewhere stopped having a conversation with God.

She further mentioned, "I could only sit in front of him late at night & feel connected. The day just went by in a blur & no it's not that we didn't love it. It's just that we wanted something else. Of course we all know that it wasn't meant to be a religious festival, it was started by Lokmanya Tilak to facilitate larger gatherings of people without invoking the suspicion of the British. And so forth & so on. Yet it's become this big huge event with people saying, ‘Oh my gosh I have so many places to go' & the ones who have him at home are constantly busy with all the social activity'".

"And so in 2015 we stopped celebrating Ganeshotsav. He was in our Mandir & our prayers all year round, just not doing the whole rituals. But they say, ‘God works in mysterious ways'. This year nearly a decade later, in 2023 Rohit said, ‘I want to bring Ganu home this year on Ganesh Chaturthi. But in a simple way'. He just wanted to be with him. And that's exactly what he did & we continue to do so now", she added.

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