Ganesh chats with Shiva after Ganesh Chaturthi Ever wondered if Ganesh and Shiva worry about the environmental impact of the festivals thrown in their honour? Sandipa Baidya hacks into the heavenly cloud a day after Ganesh Chaturthi. Pic mynameisharsha Flickr Shiva: Hi Ganesh, Good morning! Hope you had a nice sleep. Ganesh: Hello Dad, good morning. I wish I had. Shiva: Why so? I thought you might have a good rest after blessing n-number of devotees across the globe. Ganesh: You know I like sleeping with preferably less noise. Emergencies are an exception. But yesterday, the combined power of the entire loud speaker, drums and other modern instrument exceeded 105 decibels at some places. Now that s
what you call how loud is too loud. Shiva: Hmmm! I will ask Viswakarma to have an audit in the instrumentation department. Hope during Jagaraan and Navaratri he will keep a watch. And I will ask Varun to keep an eye on Law and Order, these Indian policemen do not care about the sound agenda. Varun has been very busy this year on rain execution; you know he had to compensate for last year as well. Ganesh: Hey, convey my thanks for last night as well for the rains. It definitely cut down the sound level. I liked it on FB too. Shiva: Sure, my child. Anything else? What is today s plan? Ganesh: Oh no! I need to go for a morning inspection. I wish I had a score card for post Ganesh Puja. It s lady Dharitri who always has to deal with the mess they create. Earlier everything used to be bio degradable. So the microbe unit of Dharitri department and oxygen unit of Vayu s department would do the Job. Shiva: Wait a second; I heard these days they do it in gogreen way. Ganesh: That just the Idol part dad, which is eco-friendly. Apart from that, starting from electricity consumption to waste disposal, nothing seems green any more. Nevertheless, I will give 50 marks to those who use clay idols and natural colors instead of cheap Plaster of Paris ones with color high on mercury and cadmium. Idol immersion in the sea also contributes to the presence of methyl-mercury in seawater, which eventually accumulates in the bodies of fishes. At least for you there are permanent statues and Lingams re-worshipable ones. You even make people to climb Himalayas, a good workout. But in my case, do a Google search and check Wikipedia s Ganesh Chaturthi- Environmental Impact it will show up in bold.
Shiva: Don t get carried away. As Brahma and Vishnu said, these processes of nature are fully automatic and sophisticated. After the Uttarakhand incident, Indians are terming it as fury of nature, wrath of god, etc. That is so contradictory to the saying god loves mankind. Why would I punish humankind? If you have boarded the Chennai express, then you will land in Chennai not in Goa. Similarly nature also responds in its predefined way. It does not take revenge for exploitation it goes through, it just responds. It does nothing manually; after all manual is the job of man. Ganesh: Hmmm, got it. BTW, in the meanwhile I just had glance on some satellite images on the screen. I am surprised almost every pandal has is surrounded by a pile of garbage. Let me zoom in on it. Oh no! Guess what: plastic glass, cup and paper plates are also included. Looks like all the dogs are eating from there. Shiva: Look closely, see if they really are dogs or bigger than them. Ganesh: Cows! You are right! Since when did cows start eating from garbage? I can t believe it. Shiva: Yes, my dear. Nandi has brought this to my notice. Seems in Bangalore near any garbage dump you will see more cows than dogs. He is very upset over this. For more details, have a look at the pictures uploaded by Nandi in his timeline. We are working on a project combining various vegetable and fruit unit to gather their peels and not rotten by semi dry leftovers to accumulate in fresh form and cater across to the Cow feeders. I don t mind taking bath with the quality of milk will be produced from garbage eating cows (though I am absolutely fine with a simple water bath). But imagine people drinking that milk. Ganesh: That s nice. I hope you will work on proper segregation of leftover prasadam and foods from other outlets
so that it can be catered to street dogs and piggeries in a dignified way. Shiva: What more can we do? We have already made humans superior by providing brains to create a sustainable and balanced living for themselves. But with population growth and human irresponsibility, sustainable living had remained as a mere buzz word. Okay, now tell me about your other areas of dissatisfaction in Ganesha fest. Ganesh: Okay, third is the flower section. You will be surprised to know how humans are dealing with our love for flowers. Shiva: As I understand there is a huge usage of flowers. So there is an income generation for all growers, transporters and sellers. Ganesh: I agree, but the real issue is in garbage collection implementation. In the fetch and finally block of flower s life cycle they don t have an ISI standard to follow. E.g. In domestic level, many use 30 poly bags in a month and no one knows where those are disposed after. Looks like I am not loved enough to be borne the pain of carrying a durable bag from home. Shiva: Maybe sometimes they forget. Ganesh: I understand. But at least they may save all those bags and return to the vendor at weekend/month end for the next fetching cycle. Shiva: That would be a nice. But you were saying something about garbage disposal. Ganesh: Yeah, they dispose garbage according to each one s whims and fancies. In the name of convenience all the flowers are packed up in a plastic bag and dumped into the lakes and water bodies or in a self-created land-fill or it will be
burned. And all of these are equally dangerous. The first two contribute to a fair amount of methane generation, the 2nd important contributor of global warming. And for the third way, addition of toxic gases in air composition. Shiva: Okay. How about the Pandal? Ganesh: If there are x number of pandals for me then the number of banana plants cut is 2x. Whereas the living creature which actually symbolizes me (elephants) is facing existential threat due to scarcity of food. Had this money and effort for arranging 2x number of plants been channelized for elephant s food it would have been a commendable offering to my honor. Also innumerable numbers of wood and wood derivatives (paper) are used at the cost of shedding trees. Apart from that there s illegal tapping of electricity during the festival for decoration lighting. That puts heavy load on electricity and also poses the danger of people getting electrocuted. There should have been proper guidelines for performing the puja. Shiva: Well there are. In panchatantra s, Vedas it has been defined and documented in a very rational way. But like everything people do selective reading and self-convenient interpretation. E.g. To understand my aura, I have been synonymous with 100 names, one of them being Ashutosh, meaning who can be please easily. But, see the complicated steps of shiva chaturdashi in the world. Since we gods symbolise one or many divine qualities, so ideally there was a real need perform the worship of every God. By worship I mean nurturing and connecting with those divine qualities in human body and eliminating the asura nature at a given time. So that in every step, humans can remind themselves to move towards the universal good. But over a period of time this idealism has turned into merely celebration in the name of culture and tradition. In the meanwhile Durga connects
Durga: My boy, you will see the similar replication in November during Durga Puja, especially in Bengal. They worship me as I symbolize power, courage, truth and savior. Ideally, worshiping me should have cultivated much of these qualities in them. However, seeing the number of bystanders in a crisis time does not make me feel that my real puja has been performed. Instead, whatever blessings I offer for courage are eventually misused in donation collection of next year, without introspection the fact that if I exist, I wouldn t approve of such forced donation collection. And interestingly, the sum collected is so huge that had these taxable donated money would be used for healthcare and hygiene, like constructing multi-specialty hospital or water purification plants or simply on toilets. I would have been relieved from responding to numerous prayers for saving life from diarrhea alone. Statistically, in India, diarrhea alone causes more than 1,600 deaths daily the same as eight 200-person jumbojets crashing to the ground each day. So during Durga Puja, both of you watch the end output of each pandal in details and think about the better alternative have been rendered to mankind, by keeping my worship simpler with an eco-friendly consumption and disposal in mind. All of them signed off. Originally posted on Sandipa s blog.