INDIA. Mumbai. Ganesh festival. The birthday of Ganesh Chaturthi, the elephant headed God who was the son of Shiva and Parvati, is one of the most popular annual religious festivals of Bombay. It takes place at the end of the Monsoon season in late August and September. Traditional clay effigies are carried through the city to the Bombay waterfront where they are immersed in the sacred waters and left there to be decomposed. Effigies of Gansesh and his parents Parvati and Shiva. 1980.