The celebrations of ganesh chaturthi are unique in itself with its fabulous festivities. Before the ten-day rite begins, the house and devotees must acquire a superlative state of purity. This is accomplished by cleaning or whitewashing the house or cleaning the place where the idol is to be placed.

During the festival small images are purchased from shops and brought into homes and enormous images are moulded from clay by professional craftsmen and set up in pavilions in every district and suburb. On the tenth day of the holiday or "puja" all the industrial-size images are loaded on flat bed trucks while the smaller ones travel in the back seat of cars or are simply carried by hand on the urban railways to the beaches of the city where this most beneficent of gods is immersed and his clay form dissolved in the waters of the Arabian Sea.

The event is now a colossal celebration and perhaps the world's largest religion-inspired beach party. Processions from all over Bombay commandeer the city's already congested road system riding on and walking beside trucks bearing the Ganapatis. Loud speakers shriek from the truck cabs and processionals bang drums and gongs while the orange-capped devotees on the back of the trucks shower themselves and everyone in their wake with red powder called gulal.