Vighnahar, Ozar

To pray to Vighneshwar is to ask for the clearing of the path — the removal of the vighnas, the obstacles, that stand between a devotee and their purpose — and among the eight Ashtavinayak shrines Ozar is the one where that role is named most directly. Pilgrims come especially before new undertakings, from weddings to journeys to the start of a business.

The image is swayambhu and faces east, its trunk turned to the left, with a diamond set on the brow and jewels at the navel; brass figures of Ganesha's consorts Riddhi and Siddhi stand at either side. The temple's signature celebration falls at Kartik Poornima, when for five nights the deepmalas and the whole shrine are lit with thousands of oil lamps and the golden dome glows above the river — one of the loveliest sights on the entire circuit.

Ozar stands on the bank of the Kukadi river near Junnar, in the same green upland of Pune district as its neighbour Lenyadri, and here Ganesha is worshipped as Vighneshwar or Vighnahar — the Lord who removes obstacles. The tale the temple keeps is of a demon born of obstruction itself: when King Abhinandana's great sacrifice slighted Indra, the enraged god loosed a being named Vighnasura, who set about wrecking every rite and yajna across the land. Besieged, the sages turned to Ganesha, who fought and subdued the demon; Vighnasura, humbled, begged that he trouble the Lord's devotees no more and asked only that his name be joined to Ganesha's — and so the deity is Vighneshwar, master of obstacles.

The shrine's most famous feature, its gilded spire, belongs to the 18th century. It is traditionally attributed to Chimaji Appa, brother of the Peshwa Bajirao I, who is said to have plated the dome in gold after wresting the fort of Vasai (Bassein) from the Portuguese in 1739; a later renovation of the front hall, in 1967, is credited to the devotee Appa Shastri Joshi.

Ringed by high, fortified stone walls, the temple has the settled solidity of a place tended for centuries. The Kukadi valley around it, with the Yedgaon reservoir close by, is a gentle, well-watered stretch quite unlike the drier Deccan to the south, and Ozar is usually counted the seventh halt on the Ashtavinayak round, close enough to Lenyadri that pilgrims take the two together.

Alone among the eight, Ozar is crowned by a golden dome and pinnacle — the Sonyacha Kalash — that catches the morning light above the sanctum. The temple stands within a courtyard enclosed by thick, fortified stone walls, entered through a grand gateway flanked by carved stone dvarapalas, the guardian figures, beneath a richly worked lintel; two tall deepmalas, the Deccan's stone lamp-towers, rise by the entrance.

Within are two halls in sequence — an outer hall some twenty feet high with three doorways, and an inner hall leading to the shrine — their walls carrying murals of Ganesha's legends and, at the sanctum, a later silver-framed doorway. The gilded shikhara aside, it is a temple built to endure, its fortifications a reminder of the uncertain centuries in which it grew.