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It is chanting time and enchanting times. The chants of Ganpati Bappa Morya can be heard at every nook and corner, and in lanes and by-lanes of Bombay and Maharashtra and in homes where Ganpati is accorded a royal welcome. But what does the festival of Ganpati, which begins with getting an idol of the Lord at home and ends with immersing it in the sea, mean to the film people?

It is common knowledge that filmi people are wont to publicise any and every remarkable moment of their lives and careers. But curiously enough, no film celebrity intentionally seeks publicity for his/her Ganesh bhakti. For, film people consider their religious practices to be their private domain rather than a public affair.

For many years -- and several years back -- it was V. Shantaram who was considered the most ardent devotee in the film industry, of the elephant-headed God. And the reason for it was the massive Ganpati idol he used to install every year in the hallowed premises of his magnificent Rajkamal Kalamandir Studio at Parel in Bombay. Shantaram first showed his massive Ganpati on the screen in his Navrang. The film became a huge hit when it was released in 1959. And since then, for many years, V. Shantaram’s Ganpati used to be a grand attraction for Bombayites, for its artistic richness and for the sculptor’s creation of animated expression on the Lord’s visage.

Shantaram’s son, Kiran Shantaram, reminisces: “We unfailingly brought the Navrang-type huge Ganpati idols from 1959 to 1972 (14 years). We still bring a Ganpati idol to our studio every year. On the last day of the 10-day festival, we immerse it in the sea at the nearby Shivaji Park. Those days (in my father’s time), however, Ganpati festival used to be celebrated by us on a lavish scale. We would walk in a long procession, spending a major part of the immersion day and evening to reach Girgaum Chowpatty. Our Ganpati used to be the talk of the city and the whole of India.”

Yes, V. Shantaram’s Ganpati and the celebrations that went with it had the spectacle of the rich production values that used to be a compulsory part of all his films, whether it was Navrang, Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje or Sehra, Geet Gaya Patthro Ne or Jal Bin Machhli Nritya Bin Bijlee.

Among the present generation in the film industry, Nana Patekar is one ardent devotee of Lord Ganesh. Though Nana does not like to make a show of his devotion to the Lord of knowledge and prosperity, there are newspaper photographers who welcome themselves into Nana’s house during the Ganpati festival and cajole him into posing for the camera alongside his Lord. And Nana, in these ten or eleven days, is usually in a relenting mood. Not many know that during the entire Ganesh festival period, Nana Patekar does not attend shootings.

He keeps the Ganpati idol at his mother’s residence at Mahim and, every day during the 10-day festival, Nana, the star, turns a floral decorator! He religiously and painstakingly bedecks the God with a variety of floral patterns, sometimes taking almost half a day to execute the decoration. “My father used to do such floral decorations on the idol of Ganpati. I am continuing this tradition because it makes my mother happy,” says the screen idol. One gets to see Nana in all his artistic brilliance.

The custom of installing an idol of Ganpati originated in Bombay’s predominantly middle-class Maharashtrian locality of Girgaum when Lokmanya Tilak gave a call for holding Ganeshotsavs during the British Raj. Some people observe the rituals for one-and-a-half days, some for 5 or 7 days. The others observe the festival from Ganesh Chaturthi (1st day) to Anant Chaturdashi (the last or eleventh day, also known as the immersion day). Jeetendra, who used to live in Girgaum before he was launched as a lead man by V. Shantaram in Geet Gaya Patthro Ne, is also a staunch Ganpati devotee. He installs Ganpati at his ostentatious Juhu bungalow every year. The actor-turned-producer also makes it a point to visit his old neighbours at Girgaum during the festival and have a darshan of Ganpati in the compound of Sunder Bhavan, the building where he stayed for years till he attained stardom and moved to his present address, ‘Krishna’ bungalow, on Gulmohar Road at Juhu, Bombay.