To T.V. Sudhakar, devotion comes with a sense of responsibility. The senior executive vice-president and head of compliance at Kotak Mahindra Bank is giving 1,000 ‘hand-pressed’ clay Ganesh idols to Mumbaikars for free from his home in the eastern suburb of Chembur. He calls it a “small effort to protect the environment”. Along with the idol, he will give a tulsi sapling in a clay pot to each recipient with instructions on how to immerse the idol in it.
“In two months, I’ve received 1,050 requests,” says Mr. Sudhakar, who has so far distributed 250 idols. He has stacked up the idols in a room in his house, and has involved his family in the distribution. From the responses he has received, he says, “there is no dearth of demand and appreciation”.
He spent ₹1.5 lakh from his pocket and placed an order for the 10-inch murtis (idols) with the dealer he bought his Ganesh idol from last year. People have offered to help him make the initiative bigger, and contribute to the distribution of 10,000 idols next year. He has also arranged for the distribution of 1,000 idols in Hyderabad.
Mr. Sudhakar was motivated by the shortage of clay idols in Mumbai after he moved to the city in 1994. Ganesh Chaturthi in his hometown in Mahabubnagar district in Telangana was different. From the age of seven, his family assigned him the task of procuring the idol for the puja (worship), and off he would go to the market, choosing from a variety of freshly-made clay idols. Following the puja, the family would immerse the idol in a flower pot.
In Mumbai, he managed to track down a clay idol-maker, Kasi Viswanath, only last year, in Matunga. Mr. Viswanath transports the idols all the way from Chennai.
On clayganapati.com, the website Mr. Sudhakar has created, he urges every citizen to do their bit to reduce the damage caused by the immersion of idols made with toxic materials like plaster of paris (PoP). He has since closed registrations on the website due to the overwhelming response. Mr. Sudhakar says, “We all, as residents of mother earth, have a clear responsibility to our future generations, to leave this place worth living on... we are causing enormous damage to the environment, mostly knowingly and sometimes unknowingly.”
He also believes that the “earth is a form of divinity”, and harming it in the name of god is contradictory. He says, “The festivals of Ganesh and Durga are examples of such contradictory actions from the human race.”
T. R. Sitharaman (67), a retired finance professional, is one of the beneficiaries of Mr. Sudhakar’s initiative. For the 18 years that Mr. Sitharaman has lived in Mumbai, he would buy PoP idols for his family to worship, and immerse them at a pond in Chembur, travelling all the way there from his home in Ghatkopar. This year, he received an email on Mr. Sudhakar’s offer, and immediately registered for a 12-inch idol. He says, “All these years, I found no source for clay idols. This is a great initiative. He has done a good job of sourcing and distributing the idols.”
Reliving childhood
Apart from switching to a less polluting option, what excites Mr. Sitharaman the most is that he will be worshipping the idol “the traditional way”, which he has been a witness to in his childhood in Tamil Nadu.
This is the kind of change Mr. Sudhakar would like to see, in every household. He says, “Don’t expect the government to impose this. It boils down to an individual choice. Even if two to three lakh homes in the city use clay, imagine how safe our waters will be.”