‘Stench of decayed flowers unbearable’

NEW DELHI, 18/08/2015: A machine lying outside Sai Baba temple at Lodhi Road, used for extracting oil from the flowers offered to Sai Baba,, in New Delhi on August 18, 2015. Photo: Sandeep Saxena

In a September 2012 meeting of the Shri Sai Bhakta Samaj, the committee that maintains the Sai Baba temple in Lodhi Road Institutional area, the members expressed concern over the problem of disposing flowers that were offered at the temple.

“The stench of decayed flowers was unbearable,” said committee secretary Harish Abrol Chhinda.

The committee then decided to use the donated money to buy a machine worth Rs.2 lakh in January 2013 to grind the flowers into a perfumed powder that could then be used during

havans .

“We would load the machine daily with leftover flowers and get a few kilograms of powder.”

The powder was then packed and put on display. However, people did not stop buying flowers from the market that expanded around the temple and there were no takers for the powder.

Instead, the temple’s electricity bills got inflated by a few thousand, leading the committee to conclude that the machine was a burden. The committee then decided to discard the machine.

“Our bills increased and the machine wasn’t yielding any profit.”

Today, the green-coloured machine stands rusting between two flower stalls near the temple.

With garbage dumped inside it, vendors said they expect the committee to sell it to a scrap dealer soon.

“The machine used to make a lot of noise and was a waste of money,” said Chandan Kumar, who has been selling flowers outside the temple for four years.