Sans the usual fanfare seen on every street corner, the residents of this apartment in Ongole religiously went back to the traditional way of celebrating the Vinayaka Chaviti festival in an eco-friendly manner.
Procuring ‘banka matti’ from farmers, the residents of Gadikaram Sai Saudha apartment made a big clay idol of the elephant-headed god by themselves by toiling for 20 days, explains apartment owners’ association president G.Subbaiah Sarma while overseeing the arrangement of vegetables in a pattern before performing prayers collectively for health, wealth and prosperity.
No procession
They took pains to procure fine silt from River Yamuna to give the environment-friendly idol of Kanipakka Varasiddhi Vinayaka a glazed finish as the locally available clay breaks once it gets dried, explains its secretary B.Raghava Rao.
They took a conscious decision to eschew harmful chemical paints, the residents say while taking turns to decorate the idol on the ninth day of the celebrations with turmeric and vermilion. They liberally used leaves of various types to perform puja to Lord Lambodara in a conscious effort not to generate any non-biodegradable waste.‘Darbha’ grass was burnt amid chanting of Vedic hymns and applied on the idol to give it a black look as in Kanipakkam, they explain, adding they avoided blaring music unlike other Ganesh pandal organisers to avoid noise pollution. “There will be no procession at the time of immersion on the 11th day of the festival to avoid air pollution. We have decided to immerse the idol on our flat premises itself by digging a pit and dissolving the idol with water shower amid chanting of Vishnu Sahasranamam by Krishna Mandiram members during the auspicious ‘pradosha kalam’.