On an average day, how many times does your doorbell ring when you’re not expecting someone? Take a pause and look back at how often it would ring when you were 10 years younger? How was this different when you stayed at your parents’ place versus now, assuming you live away from home?

I am back in Namma Ooru from my long visit back home, finishing up my work, from home as I do on most days. Sitting on the floor, I am slouching, my back curved like a karanji and my mattress slipping away from the wall with every passing minute. I am staring at my laptop screen, checking my phone every time my brain needs a breather.

My door bell rings. Without wasting a second, my lazy yet quick-to-respond brain tries to recall if I have ordered anything, or invited someone over. A young boy and another peep through the living room window- telling me they’re here to collect money for Ganpati Celebrations. Just when I’m about to sigh out of tiredness and come up with an excuse to not open the door, my not-so-lazy and quick-to-respond brain, reminds me of a short little someone, who about 14ish years ago, had been in the very same spot. ‘Back in the days in Pune’, I was quite an active part of our society’s ‘sarvajanik’- community Ganeshotsav Celebrations, and collecting money was just one of the small activities we grew up enjoying. This whiff of nostalgia was more than convincing for me to add my ‘vargani’– voluntary contribution to their piggy bank.

In classic ‘Modern India’ fashion, I make a UPI transaction, scanning the QR code that the boys are carrying. I am usually a stingy spender. That part of me takes a back seat when I expect greater and collective gratification. The transaction amount flashes on the screen following the never ending blue tick animation- barely the cost of a week’s vegetables for me (provided I walk down to the vegetable vendor instead of ordering for my veggies to reach my doorstep in 10 minutes). The boy with the receipt book, struggling to spell my name smiles from eye-to-eye, “people living in this neighbourhood for years are also not ready to give money, thank you so much”. He tells me when and where I can visit for the celebrations and moves on to the next house, leaving me with a fresh blend of emotional thoughts and intellectual feelings.

What value does this festival hold for me?

While we don’t bring home a Ganpati idol at my parents’ place, like most festivals that I celebrate, Ganeshotsav for me has always been about what happens outside the home. These 10 days of celebration are some of the very few days of the year that I wish I am in Pune, despite events at home being business per usual.

As an extremely outgoing child with too much energy to spare, Ganpati celebrations in the society would be the perfect channel for me to burn all of that energy. Cut to 15 years after, moving away from home meant that I got to rebuild my identity and discover and rediscover my values.

When I was in my first year of college- the word ‘community’ really caught my eye. I saw community murals being painted, community farms being grown, community protests being held. There was something incredibly magnetic about that word for me. In college, among many others, I stumbled upon my inclination towards public spaces and a vibrant use of the ‘shared commons’.

As what I like to call a ‘productive overthinker’, I questioned and looked back at what was it that made me dream of larger parks than backyards. And to my lack of surprise, the answer lied in these incredibly exhausting ‘social’ days I would spend as a child, surrounding this festival. While I would mispronounce the words in prayers and be a little awkward around the idol because I was conscious about doing something ‘wrong’, for me- the festival was always about the gathering of people and the joy of making.

As someone who has romanticised the idea of ‘community’ while sometimes living as an isolated adult- disconnected from neighbours and neighbourhoods, I found his perspective very bubble-bursting. Urban lives, often associated to progress are quite the enriching habitats for the loneliness epidemic to breed. When we equate success to instant deliveries and the rise of people spending time and money in cool pretty cafes (possibly because there are not many places people can meet just to have a chat)- we are compromising on the community that is built when you stumble across people, on your walk to the gym. ‘Living life on our own terms without a single sacrifice’ and ‘being financially stable enough to afford a nanny’ often have a subtle small tiny subtext of a lack of a ‘gang’, a ‘community’ to fall back on. It is undeniable that communities are being shaped in more ways than one today.

With physical proximity as a reason to bond being pushed to the back burner, reddit forums, book and run clubs, data jams and matcha brewing parties are how people come together and show up now. Can they replace neighbourhood communities? While these interest-first communities are here to stay, I think they overlook what we need to function as an efficient democracy– third places that bring people sharing public infrastructure together. It has been more than 10 years since we last celebrated this festival as a ‘society’ in my Pune neighbourhood and I still hold fond, silly memories from then. I have always found my Mami to incorporate design and composition principles in her modak making and plating than I could ever do in visual design projects. Beyond a point of cultural interest, these Ganeshotsav celebrations brought people together and were real-life examples of sparkly concepts we discuss today while speaking of public infrastructure and design.

The community seeker and designer in me would like to share her notes with you-

• Preparation days before Ganpati would be the poster child of ‘Labour of love’– people coming together to ‘make’ and not just consume. We would choreograph dances, decorate halls, make garlands and elaborate decorative setups around the idol- an opportunity for school kids bored of tuitions and adult kids bored of jobs to come together and embrace their artsy sensibilities.

• Days of celebration would be spaces of Intergenerational bonding. Grandpas teaching children how to play ‘shankha’– the conch shell. Families participating in three-legged races. Women of all ages gathering to set up entire musical orchestras and toddlers deriving joy out of simply being around the ‘cooler’ elder kids.
• Shops from the neighbourhood would give larger donations(almost sponsorships) to the pool, thus building closer relationships with people in the locality- not just adding to the festive joy, but also building a stronger base for better co-existence of commercial-residential spaces.