The Great Ganesha

We all know when The Great Ganesha interviewed The Chaiwallah, a.k.a. Nikhil of The Simple Leaf (remember the interview?). Through a weird twist of fate, Ganesha and Tea meet up once again in the February issue of Little India (the magazine for the Indian diaspora that’s pretty much single-handedly written by Lavina Melwani). The magazine has two articles – one on Ganesha by Melwani (of course), and the other on Tea by (surprisingly) Richa Gulati.

While searching for the issue, I came across something interesting: A Pixar cartoonist who has written and illustrated a book on Hindu mythology. Here’s his take on Ganesha.

As the picture shows, the site is called Ghee Happy. Why “Ghee Happy”? Well, in the words of the artist:

Ghee is a by-product of boiling butter in order to purify it…in a more metaphorical sense, I hope that by “boiling” Hindu iconography down to its essence, I am able to get at what is pure and timeless about the mythologies. [link]

The artist – Sanjay Patel – was born in England and brought up in LA and seems (from the name, at least) to be of Indian origin, but “has never been to India” [link]. The book is called The Little Book of Hindu Deities and has cartoon pictures of Hindu gods alongside a trendy, simplified description. For instance, for Shiva, here’s an excerpt:

Although Shiva likes to get away from it all, he is also husband to Parvati and father to Ganesha and Karttikeya [sic], so he’s got a pretty busy life. He might sport a loincloth and have long hippie hair, but he’s still a responsible father – aside from that he cut off Ganesha’s head. [link]

At best, it’s cute. And it’s nice to see that someone is taking the trouble to get the word out there in a more univerally appealing way. Worth mentioning, I thought.

Learn more about the project here or see some sample pages here.

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