Out-of-Placeness

As we finally push on with the long-delayed landscaping, I feel sometimes like adding a garden temple to Ganesha. It was a lovely temple in the courtyard of the Mayfair Hotel in Puri, Orissa that first made me think about it. Every morning, the priest would come and clean and decorate the Nandi in the little temple. How nice, I thought if I could have a little grotto for Ganesha in my backyard, although I doubt I would keep it as nicely as the priest did his little Shiva temple. But now that I live in Fairfield County, I wonder if my efforts will meet with approval or with suspicion. Here, anything that is not Christian in form or substance is viewed as crazy New Age or even worse, as black magic. My kids' babysitter N. described to me with horror how she had decided against the purchase of a home where the owner practiced, she insisted, black magic. How do you know, I asked? Well, she replied, he had a room full of images and there was a black book in there. It made me wonder, was the owner perhaps a Hindu with a puja room? After all, Kali can look pretty fearsome. But then again, Hindus typically won't cover their sacred books in black. Perhaps the poor man was just an avid collector of what seemed exotic art to him. Either way, it made me rethink my plans for my garden Ganesha. This is what it means to be a minority in a foreign land: you really have to think about your actions and how they might be perceived. I've temporarily shelved the idea of a little garden grotto for Ganesha. I certainly don't want the benevolent god of good luck to be scorned as pagan, or heathen or a deity of black magic. But most of all, I definitely don't want him to be taken for a god-awful garden gnome.