Smashing Coconuts to Honor Lord Ganesh

There I was in front of a neatly stacked pyramid of coconuts.  Parts of them appeared to have been sprinkled with turmeric water and there were tiny yellow chrysanthemums tucked here and there.   Behind me was a small altar, carefully arranged with offerings of rice, lemons and bananas with incense burning and more coconuts awaiting Lord Ganesh on his route.

Yesterday I ventured  up to the northern part of Paris in the 18 th arrondissement, where there is a huge Hindu community .  From Gare du Nord towards La Chapelle and beyond, almost every shop, storefront and grocery are Indian.  A wonderful place to find vegetables I have never seen before and buy exotic spices and teas.  But I was there for the annual Fete de Ganesh, offering a kaleidoscope of colors, sounds and smells.

Hindu men were pouring up kiwi juice and rose milk to offer to any and all milling around.  The green kiwi juice was refreshing sweet, but I preferred the pink rose milk to drink.  A Hindu man came up to me to and anointed my forehead with  sweet-smelling white powder.  I asked him what it is, but he did not speak French.

We were all awaiting the parade of Lord Ganesha.  He is the Hindu deity of prosperity, wisdom and good fortune.  He has an elephant head supplemented on a body and is evoked to  remove obstacles in our path.      The celebration of his birthday appears to be one of the most important in the Hindu spiritual calendar.   His statue was adorned with red and yellow flowers, bananas and coconuts and was pulled by a multitude of bare-chested bronzed men, swathed in white cloths chanting mantras. .

Gaily decorated floats resembling canopies or tents,  slowly pass by  with bunches of  bananas and coconuts dangling in the wind.  The heavy smell of  incense is everywhere in the air.  Pretty barefoot women clad in colorful sari follow singing and chanting.   One woman holding a coconut of wet turmeric beckoned me over and anointed my forehead again.  Two blessings in a day!

Men were seen walking while amazingly twirling tall cone-shaped decorations on their heads.   Likewise women were carrying green leafed pots of incense on theirs, spouting red flames of fire.  A multitude of Hindu faithful followed in droves.  The parade would periodically stop along the route in front of the altars for prayers and that is when the smashing of coconuts began.

The sound of smashing hundreds of coconuts filled the air and flying debris splattered me with coconut water; perhaps another blessing .  It is said that the coconut resembles  human life in three dimensions. The hard brown husk is our ego and illusion of our world.  The white flesh is our individual karma.  The pure water inside is a link to divinity.

Smashing coconuts is said to dissemble or remove any obstacles or forces holding us back, by breaking our ego.  We can then offer our the flesh and our inner selves to the will of the divine. From a psychological point of view, I can certainly concur that our ego, or perception of ourselves and the  world is usually filled with our own self-limiting obstacles.

Most of these are our multiple fears and doubts that we carry around in our psyche.  Many are negative litanies that we have carried from childhood.  Left alone, they will interfere with us reaching our full potential.   They are indeed obstacles in our path and difficult to breakthrough.

Some would prefer to hang on these limiting beliefs  like a worn out coat in order to feel safe, rather than risking a new way of seeing themselves.  As a therapist I wish it was as easy as smashing coconuts, though I really like the ritual and symbolism.

It takes a lot of energy to break through a coconut, and although I have never thrown one down on concrete, I imagine one feels a lot of release of pent-up frustration and anger. I was tempted to salvage one of the shattered husks scattered everywhere, but instead bought one intact.

Once home and in honor of the festivities I broke open my coconut with a hammer , after draining out the juice that I love to drink and I then proceeded to make a delicious  coconut cream pie.

Addendum: I would like to thank the entire Hindu community of Paris for their incredible generosity.  In addition to passing out free fruit drinks to the masses, they also were giving freely packages of delicious spiced rice and chickpeas.   All who partook of their special celebration were blessed by their immense sharing from their heart.  With much gratitude, Amen!

The spiced chickpeas were so delicious that I wanted to create the dish, figuring out the ingredients through taste and visual inspection.  The chickpeas were a melange of onions, garlic, coconut, green and red chillies, brown mustard seeds, fennel seeds and ground  coriander seeds, pepper and cumin.