In the era of online ready-made clothes, Thane's Shiv Garjana Mitra Mandal brought back the forgotten sewing machine, buttons and needles after they used these materials in decorating their Ganpati Pandal.
The mandal from Wakarwadi, Uthalsar, Thane that has been active for past 31 years is known to regularly take up social causes. This time on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi they came up with the idea of using sewing material to decorate their pandal.
They used over 11,000 thread reels, 15,000 buttons and 10,000 bobbin cases to decorate their eco-ganesha pandal. "This was ideated by Amit Pashte and Vicky Fernandes and other members helped them in making this idea come to life. We worked incessantly on this decoration for 15 to 20 days," said Shiv Garjana Mitra Mandal president Vijay Dhawale.
The mandal installs a 3 feet Shadu Mati Ganpati idol every Ganeshotsav in their pandal. "Our murti design is the name and we never change it," he added. After the immersion the decoration material is distributed among people so that they can use them in their daily lives. "Last year we used lipsticks, hair clips and other fancy beauty products used by women to decorate the pandal. After immersion we distributed them among tribal women. This year also we will distribute these buttons, needles, thread reels to them," said Dhawale.
Since the mandal have their own premises they store their basic decoration items which are reused next year. "We have plywood on which the decoration is fitted. We keep it in our storage area and use it the next year. So there is no wastage of material and resources," he added. From sweets to clay to spices and now needles, devotees this year left no stone unturned in making Ganesh Chaturthi as eco-friendly as possible.
