Step into a pandal amid the fragrance of fruits and aroma of daily staple like pulses and eye catching art of jute and other bio-degradable stuff. This Dussehra the eco-friendly crusaders of Ranchi have set an example for others to follow, a lesson to learn about celebrating the festival without causing any damage whatsoever to the ‘Mother Nature’.
While many would do nothing with fruit shells and cannot imagine any best place for a fruit than platter, Rajasthan Mitra Mandal has created a pandal entirely from nut shells and dried fruits. The committee set its eco-friendly priorities above everything and used exotic varieties of fruits usually found in Jharkhand to create the magnificent structure at a cost of Rs15-lakh and with about 20-quintals of shells and fruits of eight varieties.
If that was not the end of eco-friendly measures the Rajasthan Mitra Mandal used packing threads of jute to give shape to the embodiment of divinity especially during Navratra—Goddess Durga. Aesthetics apart the materials used being are degradable in nature. “We are concerned about environment and want to protect it from further degradation. We want to control pollution and that’s why we went for materials which do not harm the environment,” said president of Rajasthan Mitra Mandal, Ramesh Sharma.
The committees are ahead of the advisory issued by Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board (JSPCB) on September 27. The advisory asked all the puja organising committees to use environment friendly substances like clay, natural colours and other eco-friendly stuffs aimed to mitigate the threat to water bodies during and after the puja.
The Goddess is associated with power, health and wealth—which seem to be rightly depicted through the choice of materials for creating pandal and idol at Morhabadi. For Geetanjali Club at Morhabadi, pulses—a rich source of protein — is the ideal substance for creating idol of the Goddess of strength and a tribute in many way as well.
As many as eight varieties of pulses—gram and its varieties, lentils, peas, beans, tur—have been used for constructing pandal where as the idol of Durga has been made sturdy with semolina, mustard and sesame. Bales of dried paddy have been used generously to raise temporary abode for the Goddess. The radiance and color of materials used is at par with the best substances known for luster that are incidentally notorious for contaminating water reservoirs they are dumped into.
“This is not new for us. Our inclination for environment friendly materials predates the advisory issued by the pollution control board. We selected materials because we wanted to convey that there are organic substances that are better than materials which appear good but are equally bad for environment,” said secretary of Geetanjali Club, Sanjay Soni.
As these handfuls of self-made activists move on with their pro-environment objectives they seldom get any support from administration which is limited to issuing advisories and neither encouraging people protecting environment nor cracking on people flouting the call for environment friendly measures during puja.