Recently, I discovered a local spring festival that is celebrated in only four states in India, and Rajasthan is one of them. This eighteen-day festival, called Gangaur, is dedicated to the goddess Gauri. I was not aware of this festival during my childhood because even though I lived in India, our family never lived in Rajasthan or in any of the other states where this festival is celebrated.
What was significant about my discovery of this festival? Our family is one of the few if not only non-royal families to possess a statue of this goddess. Our deity is brought out of her temple during the eighteen-day festival, adorned with expensive jewelry, and then displayed to the public for the last two days of the festival (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZEKuaPAbkY). On the last day of the festival, after a special prayer service, she is returned to her temple in one of our family’s havelis (houses) and the door is locked until the festival begins the next year.
Most people who celebrate this festival buy wooden or clay statues at the beginning of the festival, worship them for the duration of the festival, and immerse the statues in a well or pond at the end of the festival.
One-hundred-fifty years ago, the king of Bikaner made a very unusual move by giving a statue of the goddess Gauri to my father’s family.
