Ganesha loves his ‘bucket’ immersion

Priest say immersing Ganesh in clean water is very important.

Hyderabad: The trend of immersing Ganesha in an eco- friendly manner is picking up and several residential colonies can be seen making conscious efforts to reduce their carbon footprint this festival.

On the third and fifth day of Ganesha immersion, residents choose not to pollute the water bodies in the city and instead opted to immerse the eco-friendly Ganesha’s in a bucket of water which would then be used to water the plants.

A resident Pawan Kumar from Manikonda said, “For the last three years we have been immersing the Ganesha idol in a container. First, we place our idol and pour fresh water on the idol. The idol slowly disintegrates and mixes with the water. This water is then used to water our plants and trees.”

He shared that their residential association also follows the same procedure. A small temporary immersion pond has been built in which the idols are immersed in the presence of all the residents.

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Another resident from Yapral said that he along with his son make a clay Ganesha idol for the festival. At the time of immersion, the entire family together immerse the idol at home in a steel container full of water and flowers.

Priests in the city are welcoming the move and pointed out that immersing Ganesha is not just the only task. Sundar Babu, a local priest at the Sainikpuri temple said, “Ganesha has to be immersed in freshwater, so instead of using the polluted water of lakes and polluting them further it is better to immerse it at home in freshwater.” Sundar Babu immersed his three-and-a-half clay Ganesha idol in a tub of water amidst the traditional Naadaswara music.

While the situation of home immersions is getting better, there has been no improvement when it comes to pandal Ganesha as they still preferring use Plaster of Paris (PoP) idols which they then immerse into lakes and ponds.

This year the Pollution Control Board (PCB) limited itself to distributing small Ganesha idols after last year’s incident in which the large clay idols got damaged while being transported. The year the PCB distributed about 1.6 lakh clay Ganesha idols.