Not all Ganesha idols are destined for glory

Even as idols of Lord Ganesha settled down in pandals across the city, there were some left behind in workshops. Disfigured and left alone, like in past years, they have been abandoned on the streets, left behind for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to immerse.

Each year, nearly 1.25 lakh idols are sold in Mumbai, and approximately 2,500 are abandoned, estimates noted idol-maker Vijay Khatu. These idols are left on the roadside, mostly in Lalbaug and near Kabootarkhana in Dadar (west). Ironically, the idols are abandoned not far from the place where they were created: the Dadar-Lalbaug belt. 

Technically speaking, the abandoned idols are municipal solid waste. They aren’t disposed of at dumping grounds, however, to protect ‘religious sentiments’. Almost every morning during Ganeshotsav, they are picked up by municipal workers or NGOs working with the BMC and taken to sea. AB Khanolkar, assistant municipal commissioner, G/North Ward, said, “We picked up 26 idols on Tuesday.”

Since Mumbai’s renowned idol-makers only make Ganesh idols to order, they don’t have any left over. However, the lesser-known ones make idols in anticipation of their sale, which often proves optimistic. They have to store their statues. Idol-maker Chetana Bangal of Lalbaug said she had five or six idols three-foot-tall statues unsold. Each costs Rs2000-2500. She said she would keep them in her workshop, and sell them after touch-ups next year.

Others cannot do so. In this city where space is scarce and costly, many idol-makers do not have workshops of their own. They rent a room or put up a temporary shed, and close shop after selling their idols. They cannot keep the ones that remain unsold. At times, they dissolve such idols in buckets of water and re-use the clay, or break them.

And some people just abandon them.

Many people oppose this practice, generally, but not always for religious reasons. The Ganeshotsav Samanvay Samiti, a coordinating body of Ganesh mandals (associations), has complained against the practice to the municipal body. It has requested the BMC to submerge the idols with respect, says Samiti president Pandurang Jadhav. The idol-maker, Khatu, said the practice of disposing unsold idols arose out of a lack of respect by artists towards their work. “People with a business mentality view the Ganesh idols as stock-in-trade,” he said.

According to one idol-maker, Rajan Pulekar of Dadar, the heavy supply of idols in the market this year is another reason. 30 of his nine-inch-tall idols are unsold this year, a rare occurrence for him. “Usually all our idols go (Ervi aamchya sagalya murtya jaatat),” he said in the seller’s slang.

This year, he said, cheap and jerrybuilt idols from outstation makers flooded the market and cornered a chunk of it. While Pulekar has not made a loss - he says he never does - he says it pains him to see idols standing on his shelves when they should have been worshipped in people’s homes. 

Pulekar adds that some idols made by his apprentices didn’t come out right, while pointing to a few unpainted ones. They were not well-proportioned. A few had crossed eyes; others had outsize trunks in relation to the heads. “You can make out that the trunk has been stuck on to the face,” he said. The effect of the disproportionate features was that the expressions on the idols’ faces were not combinations of the elephantine and the calm divine that idol-makers strive for. Pulekar left such idols unpainted so that they were not mistakenly offered to a buyer. Many unscrupulous idol-makers, he said, would sell such idols for less, which is what he said happened this year. And so, some of his sales-quality idols remained unsold, their benign faces and golden crowns covered by cloth, their upraised hands blessing the darkness of a deserted workshop.

He will soon have to undertake the tedious and messy business of building a loft in his house especially for the idols.