Ravikiran’s wide smile and pleasing
demeanour firms up his customers desire to go the eco-friendly way this Ganesha
festival.
The young man has been hawking clay
Ganeshas for the last eight years in Sahakar Nagar. This year too he is back on
his roadside perch near the park stocking and convincing curious clients to
switch over to his hand-made models.
The clay models of the elephant god is sans
any colour and decoration. `It is certainly more eco-friendly as being
advocated by environmentalists. After immersion, the paint and other chemicals
do not poison the ground water,’’ he says.
These Ganeshas are available in various
sizes – from half-a-feet to upto two-and-a-half-feet long.
They cost between Rs
100-700 a piece depending on one’s bargaining power.
Ravikiran, one of the first in north
Bangalore to make and sell eco-friendly idols, predicts the demand for such
non-fancy models will be high this year, in fact, higher than last year as
people too realize that saving the immediate environment and surrounding is the
first priority.
Sunil Kumar, a shopper with his small child
in tow says he has been looking around for clay and other models of Ganeshas
this year. ``My little child has also been taught the same in school. We are
all ok to buy an idol without colour. We can always decorate it with colourful flowers,
umbrella and other material.’’
While vendors too are getting conscious and
better educated, due to persistent demand they still sell a small quantity of
painted Ganeshas too but the colours used are eco-friendly as a result of which
the idols do not have the glow of an oil paint.
Joining vendors are also residential
associations. The Sahakar Nagar Women’s Welfare Association this week held a
clay-Ganesha making class in the neighbourhood to promote this concept which is
gaining acceptability. The response was overwhelming, says a member who
participated along with her children.
As a save-the-environment initiative, www.northbangalorepost.com invites
readers to mail pictures of their eco-friendly Ganesha along with their names
and location to northbangalorepost@gmail.com
and they will be published on the site and our facebook account.
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