Ganesh Chaturthi opens in Mumbai and Hyderabad with a 69-foot Khairatabad idol

Ganesh Chaturthi began on 14 September. In Mumbai the Bhadrapada Shukla Chaturthi tithi ran from 7:06 a.m. that day to 7:44 a.m. on 15 September. The main puja window in the city panchang was 11:20 a.m. to 1:48 p.m. on the 14th. Immersion is set for Anant Chaturdashi on 25 September.

Markets in Mumbai filled with clay idols, flowers and sweets. Small statues went into flats. Larger ones moved through the streets on trucks with drums. Public pandals went up at the usual addresses: Lalbaugcha Raja at Putlabai Chawl, GSB Seva Mandal at King's Circle in Matunga East, Andhericha Raja in Azad Nagar, Khetwadicha Ganraj in Girgaon, and Chinchpoklicha Chintamani in Parel-Chinchpokli. More than 16,800 police, including quick-response units, were posted for the opening and for the later immersion days.

Hyderabad's centre of gravity is Khairatabad. Organisers there installed a 69-foot, five-faced idol of Panchamukha Sankatahara Maha Ganapati. The five faces stand for earth, water, fire, air and space. The site is expected to draw about three million visitors before the idol goes into the water. Telangana governor has been invited for the first puja. Crowds in the neighbourhood danced and queued through the first evening while work on the pandal continued.

The festival marks the birth of Ganesha, the god households ask to clear a path. In Maharashtra it is also a public political fact. Bal Gangadhar Tilak turned a household rite into a street gathering in the 1890s so that people could meet under a religious calendar the colonial police could not easily ban. The large community idols are the descendants of that decision. They still draw party banners, municipal permits, and arguments about plaster, plaster dust, and what the lakes can absorb when the idols go in.

This year's calendar is tight. Eleven days from sthapana to visarjan is the common city pattern. Traffic police will treat 24 and 25 September as the peak. Housing societies that keep a small idol for one and a half days will have finished before then. The Khairatabad statue will not. Three million people around a 69-foot figure is a crowd-control problem as much as a devotion count.

City officials in Mumbai have used the same playbook for years: extra men at the big five pandals, medical posts, and a separate plan for the Girgaon and Girgaum Chowpatty immersions. The new variable each year is the weather in late September and the condition of the creeks. Neither was part of Monday's opening pictures. Those pictures were clay, saffron cloth, and the first drums.

For eleven nights the festival is the main public calendar in both cities. After the 25th the story becomes the state of the water and the cost of taking the plaster back out.