Puja done, idols make their way to artificial ponds

New Delhi

New Delhi

HT Image

It is around 4pm. A group of devotees from the Durga Puja committee in Delhi’s Kashmere Gate — believed to be the oldest in the city — arrived in an open ground where an artificial pond, with more than 8,000 cubic feet capacity, was dug up by the Delhi government.

Dozens of men and women playing with red vermilion and dancing to the beats of the dhak (a traditional percussion instrument) followed a truck loaded with the idols of Durga and her children – Saraswati, Lakshmi, Kartik and Ganesh.

In the next 20 minutes, the idols of the deities were immersed in the artificial water body, unseparated. With their faces upwards, as if looking at the sky, the deities slowly float to the centre of the pond, only to be consumed by the water within seconds. The dhaks stop beating and with that, a 110-year-old tradition for the Durga Puja in Kashmere Gate comes to an end.

The idols of the deities were for the first time immersed in an artificial pond instead of the Yamuna.

The idol immersion protocol was followed by more than 500 Durga Puja committees in the city on Tuesday. Together, they gave up a ritual where idols were taken to the Yamuna as part of a procession and immersed there.

“There were concerns initially and we were unsure if the plan would work. But then it happened. We are happy to contribute to the environment as long as we get clean water from the Yamuna. If only, the government had provided an artificial pond at a closer location for us. The nearest Yamuna ghat is hardly 2km from Kashmere Gate but we had to travel five times that distance,” said Robin Bose, member of the Durga Puja committee in Kashmere Gate, after immersion of the idols in north Delhi’s Burari.

The protocol was decided by the Delhi government, which issued an order prohibiting immersion of idols in the Yamuna and directed Durga Puja committees to conduct immersions only in artificial ponds. The government order came after a two-member National Green Tribunal-appointed Yamuna pollution monitoring committee last month prohibited immersions in Yamuna. The cue was taken from Surat, Gujarat, which recently set an example by not allowing any Ganpati idol immersions in Tapi river.

While several committees created their own pits in near their puja venues, for others the Delhi government created as many as 116 artificial water bodies of different dimensions across the city. The government also scheduled timings for each committee in order to avoid potential traffic chaos and to ensure that workers deployed in the pits got adequate time to clear undissolved remains of idols between immersions.

Even the traffic situation this year was visibly better compared to previous ones, the police said. A senior Delhi Traffic Police official said, “There was a reduction in traffic snarls. The usual choke points such as Kalindi Kunj, ITO, Kashmere Gate and areas around Red Fort saw smooth traffic on Tuesday. Till evening, we did not get any major complaints of jams.”

The exercise, however, was no less than a litmus test for both Durga Puja committees, the government and multiple civic agencies.

Till Monday evening, stakeholders shared common concerns over multiple issues — whether the dimensions of the ponds would be adequate, whether the ponds would be able to accommodate multiple idols in limited space and how the immersions will be scheduled.

“We were nervous about it because it is happening for the first time. At one point, where we were expecting nine Durga Puja committees to arrive and immerse their idols, 15 had turned up. We could accommodate all of them as we had made adequate arrangements,” said Greater Kailash MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj, who has under his jurisdiction the CR Park neighbourhood which witnesses several prominent Durga Pujas every year within a 3km radius.

Ashish Bhattacharya, a resident of CR Park, however, was not completely convinced. “There could have been other ways, such as making smaller idols. The immersion is a matter of belief. When the idols go into the river, we believe it is going back to the Himalayas. Where will it go from the ponds?”

Ankana Chowdhury, a devotee who had come to witness the immersion in C R Park’s iconic Durga Puja in Mela Ground, had mixed opinions. “For our elders, it is a matter of sentiment and that conflict will remain. However, it is necessary to save the environment for the younger generation. It was saddening to see idols go through filthy water and then in the Yamuna. This option, along with being environment friendly, solves that problem,” said Datta Roy, another C R Park resident.

While the government said that most artificial pits were filled with drinking and potable water supplied by the Delhi Jal Board, several devotees raised concerns over hygiene.

“The water was filthy. This immersion could not be called a visarjan at all. We kept the idols close the pond, sprinkled Gangajal on the idols and left. That was the best we could do,” said Swapan Ganguly, a Durga Puja committee member from near Delhi cantonment.

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