Ganesh Visarjan 2026: Pune bids Bappa adieu amid cheers, chaos, enduring traditions

Desai, who moved to Pune from Satara for work around 10 years ago, said the visarjan is the one night the city’s much-discussed traffic snarls feel almost earned. “Any other day I’d be cursing the jam. Today, I’m part of it.”

Not everyone shares his patience for the crowd, though. Madhuri Netake, a resident of Karve Nagar, said the experience this year left her rattled. “I came to Alka Chowk with friends specifically to see the big mandal idols, and honestly, we regretted it within 20 minutes,” she said.

“The crowd control barely existed in that stretch during the arrival of Shrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Ganpati. We were literally lifted off our feet at one point in the rush,” she added.

Netake said the problem was particularly acute for women in the crowd. “For most of the time on Friday evening there was no space to move in Alka Chowk, forward or back. My friend and I got lost for some time. Every year we expect better barricading near Alka Chowk, and every year it’s the same bottleneck,” she lamented.

For Varsha Jadhav, a homemaker from Wakad who has watched the ‘visarjan’ shift character over years, the noise itself told a different story this year. “Bapat’s call for a DJ ban and curbs on noise pollution was observed at some places along the procession. However, there were still multiple DJs installed, and some sound systems felt louder than they should be; the sound was deafening. It felt that the curbs work better on paper than on the main procession road,” Jadhav pointed out.

Other residents, meanwhile, continue to insist that no city in India does Ganeshotsav quite like Pune does.

“Mumbai has scale, Hyderabad has the big lake, but Pune has generations who grew up inside this festival, playing dhol, painting idols, collecting vargani as teenagers. That legacy, that continuity of ownership, you rarely find replicated anywhere else. It is tough to say ‘Pudchya varshi lavkar ya’ (Come back soon next year) during visarjan,” said Akshay Killedar, a civil services aspirant based in Shukrawar Peth, adding that the city’s traffic and civic planning have struggled to keep pace with the festival’s own growth.

Among the several acts performed during ‘visarjan ‘ was the age-old martial art, Vetra Charma.

Chinmay Pandhari, a member of Shriram Vetra Charma Pathak, said, “Vetra Charma is performed with a vetra (a bamboo stick) and charma (a compact leather shield). It’s an old martial art that dates back to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj era. It is similar to Kalaripayattu, an Indian martial art from the southern state of ancient Keralam.”