Sometimes change does not arrive with an argument.

Sometimes it looks like a woman holding a plate of kumkum who simply

refuses to leave anyone outside the circle.

In India, Ganesh Chaturthi arrives with a particular kind of joy.

Homes fill with flowers and food.

Families gather.

Music spills into streets and neighborhoods.

Ganesha is welcomed with lamps, prayers and sweets,

and voices rise together in the familiar chant:

Ganapati Bappa Morya!

It was during one such festive season that a friend said

something to me as we were leaving work.

“My mother is celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi at home.

I want you to come home with us for the celebration.”

I looked at her.

“Me? Are you sure?”

She knew exactly why I was asking.

My friend was widowed. I was divorced.

We had shared enough of our lives with each other to understand

the things that sometimes did not need to be said aloud.

In some families and communities, women whose marital circumstances have changed

can find themselves treated differently during occasions considered auspicious.

Sometimes the exclusion is obvious.

Sometimes it is disguised as custom.

Sometimes nobody says anything at all—

the woman simply learns, from a hundred small gestures,

where she is expected to stand.

My friend knew my hesitation because she knew something of that world too.

She took my hand.

“Yes. YOU. Let's go. I want you to come with me.”

So I climbed onto her bike, and off we went.

🐘

A House Full of Celebration

Her mother's home was crowded when we arrived.

The festive air was everywhere—family, conversation, food, flowers,

the happy commotion that accompanies a house filled with people.

Her family had gathered for the celebration, many of them with their spouses and children.

As I looked around the room, I found myself glancing at her.

I knew some of what she carried in her heart, and I wondered

what it felt like for her to stand among all those families

while carrying a grief most people in the room could not see.

Yet there she was beside me.

Smiling.

And because she was there, I stayed.

The puja began.

Soon the room filled with voices.

Ganapati Bappa Morya!

I joined them.

But some part of me still wanted to disappear quietly into the wall.

I had learned to be cautious in rooms like this.

There was a reason.

🐘

A Sentence I Had Not Forgotten

Not long before, my youngest cousin had been married.

We cousins had grown up together, and on her wedding day I had dressed for the celebration

and joined the others walking behind the bride toward the wedding hall.

I remember the happiness of that moment.

And then I felt someone tug at my elbow.

I turned.

It was my mother.

She pulled me aside and asked what I was doing among the wedding party.

I should not be participating like this, she told me.

I was divorced.

My presence in an auspicious gathering could be considered apashakuna—inauspicious.

I froze.

It felt as though someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over me.

I don't remember much of what happened immediately afterward.

I only remember that I could no longer hear the celebration in quite the same way.

Something in me withdrew.

And after that, whenever I encountered occasions surrounded by rules

about what was auspicious and who was permitted to participate fully,

I learned to step back before somebody could ask me to.

So when my friend had said,

“I want you to come,”

my first response had been:

Me? Are you sure?

🐘

When Her Mother Reached Us

After the Ganesh puja ended, my friend's mother began moving

among the women who had gathered.

She carried the traditional offerings associated with the occasion—kumkum, turmeric,

flowers, betel leaves and nuts, fruit and coconut.

Tamboolam.

I watched her move from one woman to another.

Flowers were placed in their hair.

Kumkum touched their foreheads.

Plates of auspicious offerings were placed in their hands.

Eventually, she reached us.

I don't know what I expected.

Perhaps I had already prepared myself for that tiny hesitation I had learned to recognize.

A pause.

A different gesture.

Some subtle indication that we belonged to another category.

Instead, she reached for a flower garland.

She placed it in her daughter's hair.

Then she turned to me.

And placed one in mine.

She put kumkum on my friend's forehead.

Then on mine.

She handed her tamboolam.

Then she handed the same to me—turmeric, flowers, betel nuts, fruit and coconut.

Exactly as she had done for everyone else.

She didn't hesitate.

She didn't explain.

She didn't blink.

There was no special category for us.

No pity.

No qualification attached to our belonging.

Then she fed us sweets with her own hands and insisted that we take some home.

And suddenly I was crying.

We Didn't Need to Say Anything

My friend looked at me.

She had tears in her eyes too.

She squeezed my hand.

I squeezed hers.

Neither of us said anything.

We didn't need to.

Two women who knew what it felt like to be regarded differently were standing beside each other

experiencing something that should never have been extraordinary:

We were being treated exactly like everybody else.

I don't know whether her mother understood what her simple gestures had meant to us that day.

Perhaps she went to bed that night remembering nothing unusual at all.

But I remembered.

I still do.

Because without knowing it, she had placed kumkum on the exact place

where another woman's words had once wounded me.

One woman had made me feel that my presence diminished an auspicious occasion.

Another woman welcomed me into one without hesitation.

She did not restore my dignity—because my dignity had never been lost.

But she restored something else.

My sense that I could belong without qualification.

🐘

The Woman Who Made the Circle Wider

Over the years, I have thought often about that woman.

What stays with me is not that she made some grand statement against tradition.

She didn't.

She simply behaved according to the kindness in her own heart.

She did not need to experience divorce herself before treating a divorced woman with dignity.

She did not need to experience widowhood before recognizing the dignity of a widow.

She did not need suffering to teach her empathy.

Her heart was already large enough.

Sometimes we speak about changing society as though change must begin with

movements, declarations and enormous acts of courage.

Sometimes it does.

But sometimes reform begins much more quietly.

One person notices who has been pushed toward the edge—

and makes the circle wider.

No announcement.

No applause.

Just:

Come. There is room for you here.

🐘

What Happens After We Leave the Altar?

There is something I have come to think about whenever Ganesh Chaturthi returns.

We worship Ganesha as Vighnaharta—the remover of obstacles.

We ask Him to clear our paths.

We pray for wisdom.

We ask for grace.

We invite Him lovingly into our homes.

And yet, what an extraordinary contradiction it is to stand before Vighnaharta—

the remover of obstacles— while maintaining human-made barriers at the doorway.

Perhaps some of the obstacles Ganesha asks us to remove are not the ones standing in our path.

Perhaps they are the ones we have placed in someone else's.

An inherited belief.

An unquestioned custom.

A distinction between who is considered auspicious and who is not.

The assumption that a woman's marital status somehow determines the

joy, dignity or sacredness she is permitted to carry into a room.

Tradition can hold extraordinary beauty.

But surely devotion must also ask something of us

after the lamp has been extinguished

and the puja plate put away.

How do we treat the person standing beside us?

Who have we quietly pushed toward the edge?

Whose absence have we stopped noticing?

Whom have we made afraid to enter our homes?

And when we recognize it, are we willing to make room?

🐘

The Promise I Made to Myself

Something changed for me after that Ganesh Chaturthi.

I decided that I would celebrate the festival with joy from then onward,

regardless of whether life described me as single or married.

Ganesh Chaturthi belonged to me too.

And I kept that promise.

Every year when the festival returns, I remember the woman who welcomed

two women into her celebration

and never once made them feel that she was doing them a favor.

I remember flowers in my hair.

Kumkum on my forehead.

Tamboolam in my hands.

A sweet offered with affection.

My friend's hand squeezing mine.

And two sets of tears that required no explanation.

I still offer a little prayer for that kind woman.

For her health.

For her happiness.

And always:

May there be more like her in this world.

Because these are the women who make the world more beautiful to live in.

The ones who don't merely speak about change.

They live it.

The ones who understand that another person's belonging does not diminish their own.

The ones who look around a crowded room, notice

who has been taught to stand at its edges—

and quietly say:

Come closer.

Perhaps that is one way we honor the remover of obstacles.

By making certain that we are not becoming one in somebody else's path.

Ganapati Bappa Morya. 🐘🙏❤️

🐘

May we see her. May we be her.

❤️

“Perhaps some of the obstacles Ganesha asks us to remove are not the ones standing in our path.
Perhaps they are the ones we have placed in someone else's"