The idol arrives before the crowd does
In a Mumbai pandal, the Ganpati is already waiting when you get there. In a Goan home during Chavath, you watch him arrive. The murti is brought in through the front door, sometimes carried by the eldest son, sometimes by a priest, sometimes by whoever in the family has always done it, and placed on a wooden maach that has been set up in the same corner of the same room for decades. The maach is not a stage. It is a seat. The distinction matters.
