Ganesh fest goes green in Ongole

Many devotees worship clay idols at home and in pandals

Fenugreek God: Schoolchildren display an image of Lord Ganesh obtained by arranging sprouts from clay balls embedded with fenugreek seeds at a school .

Thanks to the relentless campaign launched by civil society organisations, the Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations went green in Ongole and its surroundings this year with more and more devotees making a conscious effort to use environment-friendly material for making Ganesh idols.

More than 200 students of the Swami Sivananda School at Karavadi, near here, prepared with their deft hands small images of Lord Vigneshwara with fine clay embedded with fenugreek seed balls ahead of the festival. Their joy knew no bounds with sprouts emerging from the clay idols worshipped by them on the Chaturthi day, shunning harmful plaster of Paris and chemical paints under the guidance of their teachers.

“The whole effort is to kindle the students’ interest in returning to the traditional way of celebrating the festival in a pollution-free environment,” explains school correspondent G. Satya Sai Babu.

Social activists led by Volunteer Environment Organisation G. Veerbhadrachari created a 15-feet-long

Sayana Gowriputra idol in a reclining posture with two tonnes of sand at the picturesque Rangrayudu Cheruvu, a morning walkers’ paradise. The devotees were happy to take home beautiful Ganesh idols made with nature-friendly material by sand sculptor T.P. Mishra.

Rice Vinayaka

In Srinivasa Colony, a seven-foot ‘Rice Vinayaka’ idol has been installed for the festival. “About 500 kg of rice has been arranged in a pattern to get the attractive image of Lord Ganesha,” explains festival organising committee convenor Bezawada Poornachandra Rao.

Devotees at Ranguthota here toiled for 10 days to make a gigantic Ganesh idol with 5,000 miniature clay images of Lord Lambodara by arranging them in a pattern. “Instead of taking the Ganesh idol in a procession, we will dissolve it using water in our colony itself on September 3, the immersion day,” says Mr. Kuppam Prasad, president of Ranthuthota Bala Bakta Samajam.

With sediments collected from the revered River Ganga, the Society for Awareness and Vision on Environment (SAVE) churned out hundreds of grandiose environment-friendly Ganesh idols with, among other ingredients, bamboo sticks, paddy straw and husk, to satisfy the desire of devotees keen on putting mega idols in their apartments and street corners on the occasion.

Jute bags and handloom cloth were given free of cost to the devotees as part of a conscious effort to prod devotees to shun plastic on the one hand and provide employment to artisans and handloom weavers on the other, said SAVE convenor M. Rachana.