Nov 2019 (3)

A different day, and it's a different way..

Manjusha II Com

We listen to speeches and also give prepared speeches, we write pages and we also read several books, everywhere and Every year -about pollution. Pollution, pollution, pollution!!!
This has created Noise Pollution!
But what do we do?! Certainly we add to pollution. While celebrating festivals also we are harming our mother nature- knowingly or unknowingly.
Ganesha Chathurthi. A festival of nature God. On that day also we do a lot of harm to our nature. Our puranas say Mother Parvathi, who symbolises nature, created Ganapa using dirt from her body. But how do we prepare Ganesha idols for Puja? It's definitely not good for the mother earth. We prepare large sized idols of Plaster of Paris, using chemical-based colours. Even in a small village like Vandse there are 3-4 public pendals doing Sarvajanika Ganesha Utsava and there are idols prepared in houses. Thus immersion of all these idols definitely pollute our water bodies.
So, what is the alternative? Eco-friendly idols and celebration.
But how?
Can we do something? When we thought about preparing idols, the Clay Model Competition came to our mind. Many of my friends have participated in it in highschool and have prepared different models and the most repeated model is Ganesha. Moreover, Ganesha is a simple God, easily moulded using simple art. And for us, message is more important than beauty.
So, we started out. We brought fertile red soil from the nearby forest. Pounding and mixing it, prepared the clay. Then shaped the idols using our imagination.

In the beginning, it was not a good artwork. But later it came out better than we thought. We insert ex seeds in them. We also decorated them with leaves, flowers and nuts. We even made Ganesha's favorite dish, Modaka and laddu. And can we leave Ganesha's vehicle, Mooshika the rat?  Using the clay, we made the rat also.
35 students of the college prepared 10 idols in about 2 hours. Then we exhibited the decorated idols. Our lecturers and other students appreciated our work and our sincere concern for saving nature.
We dug the pits and ‘planted' these Ganeshas. So these plant-a-Ganeshas grow into plants later so that it is a daily worship of the son of nature. The puranas say, Mother Parvathi symbolises nature.

A simple thought and a simple work has given us the satisfaction that we have done something different to help mother earth.