Now, devotees have eco-friendly ways of worship

Every year just before the Ganesh festival, the police invokes archaic laws to restrict photographers from capturing images of Ganesh idols strewn on the various immersion points on beaches and river fronts. The official explanation is that it prevents hurting religious sentiments. Though that may be the bureaucratic solution to hide the environmental pollution caused by the Ganesh festival at the various immersion points, Ganesh bhakts are far from immune to ground reality.

Ganesh devotees across the spectrum are coming up with new ideas and solutions to worship Ganesh without causing any harm to the environment. Graphic designer-turned -professional baker Rintu Rathod was so disturbed by the sights of Ganesh idols lying on the beach and people walking all around it, that she hit upon a new idea to avoid environmental damage. Five years back, she started making Ganesh idols out of chocolate that she immerses in milk, and distributes the chocolate milk to children at an orphanage. This year, Rathod is planning a 45-kg chocolate Ganesh to distribute to a lot more children. She has also shared a YouTube video to teach people to make small Ganesh idols from five chocolate bars in five minutes flat.

Television actor Sumit Raghavan’s family has been worshipping a 9-inch silver idol for the past eight years. The idol is kept in a locker and brought out for the occasion. It is taken out a day before the Ganesh festival, worshipped, taken to the immersion point, immersed in water symbolically once, and brought back home.

“We deliberately make it a point to take it to the local immersion point and not do the immersion at home itself, as we wish to motivate and inspire others on how to worship Ganesha without damaging the environment. My father came up with this concept 20 years ago,” says his wife Chinmayee Sumit.

The family also avoids paper decorations and uses only seasonal flowers and zari sarees or dupattas for the decoration. The wilted flowers are not thrown out; instead they are used in a vermicomposting pot at home.

Marathi actress Madhura Velunkar’s family too has decided to do away with clay idols. Her brother-in-law, a commercial artist, will be making Ganesh idol out of mud, which they plan to ‘immerse’ in a potted plant or probably leave it to dissolve in a bucket of water. The family is planning to have a permanent idol of silver or

panchdhatu (five metals) at home for the Ganesh festivities, after witnessing the “horrible conditions of Juhu beach” during immersions.

Though many websites tend to portray river clay or shadu Ganesh idols as an eco-friendly option over the environmentally-unfriendly plaster-of-paris idols, Anand Pendharkar, environmentalist and founder director of NGO, Sprouts, says it’s far from the truth. “Crabs and fishes lay their eggs at river beds. Where is the sense to take out huge quantities of river clay out of their natural habitat and then immerse it in the sea; making the sea muckier with heaps of river clay,” he says.

Mr. Pendharkar now offers mud idols filled with fish food. He also conducts workshops to make Ganesh idols out of papier mache. “Ideally, you should have small permanent idols or make idols at home with decorations that can be used year on year to avoid polluting your environment,” he suggests.

The writer is a freelance journalist