Sunita Ahuja brought Ganpati Bappa home on Sunday, a day ahead of Ganesh Chaturthi, and danced through the ritual on camera. Govinda was nowhere in the frame.

The clips, shared widely on Instagram pages that track the couple, show Sunita in full festive mode, arms up, grinning through the beats. It's the kind of video that would ordinarily just be a nice family moment. Except this year every comment section under it has turned into a roll call for her husband.

"Is Saal Govinda ji Gayab hai yaar," one user wrote, more or less summing up the mood. Others zeroed in on how thin Sunita looked, praying for her wellbeing. A smaller crowd just asked, bluntly, who she even is without him.

Earlier the same day, paparazzi caught Sunita and daughter Tina Ahuja outside their building and asked the obvious question, whether Govinda would join the Ganpati homecoming this year. Sunita's answer left no room for him either way. "Hamari saas ka pratha hai woh toh. Main jab tak zinda ho, aayega hi," she told them, that as long as she's alive, the tradition her mother-in-law started will continue.

That non-answer lands against a messy few months. Last month Sunita and son Yashvardhan Ahuja were photographed at the family court, and Govinda's manager later told reporters she'd gone there to withdraw a divorce case. Neither Sunita nor Govinda has offered their own detailed account of what prompted the visit or the withdrawal.

Sunita has separately alleged, in comments to the press, that Govinda is involved with an actress named Komal Rani Swarnakar. When Govinda was photographed with Swarnakar at an airport a few weeks back, Sunita went after the actress' styling choices in front of cameras and called her husband a "sugar daddy." Govinda, for his part, told the media she should stop making such remarks. None of this has been addressed in a court filing, and both the affair claim and the sugar-daddy jibe remain exactly what they are, allegations traded in front of paparazzi mics rather than anything settled.

So the Ganpati videos are being read less as a festival update and more as a referendum on where the marriage stands. Every year, the couple has typically done this together. This year, one half of that tradition showed up. Whether Govinda turns up for the visarjan later this week, or whether the family issues a statement of its own, is still open.