When Swarajit Alakananda was passing by Flower Market around Ganesh Chaturthi in 2017, the colourful clay idols for sale by the roadside made him pause. “They looked beautiful, but I wondered if there was danger lurking behind, as the Tamil proverb goes,” recalls the 32-year-old. Swarajit has always been a Nature lover and was involved in lake clean-ups even back then. “I wondered what the idols might do to our waterbodies once they were submerged,” he says.What if the idols were made of nothing but pure earth? What if they came to life once they touched water? Thus was born the idea of ‘seed Ganesha’, one that took the city by storm in 2017. Swarajit, who runs an NGO called So Aware, worked with potters in places such as Edayarpalayam, Selvapuram, and Sundakkamuthur to come up with eco-friendly variations of Ganesha idols. The best part: they could be submerged at home in a bucket of water and once they dissolved, the vegetable seeds in them sprouted forth. If cared for, they yielded vegetables for the entire family.
Swarajit Alakananda is seen with seed Ganesha idols ahead of Ganesh Chaturthi.
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Swarajit’s idea was welcomed by consumers and the city corporation alike, and he and his team worked round the clock to deliver the idols themselves. He recalls that the K Vijayakarthikeyan, who served as the Commissioner of the Coimbatore Corporation back then, was especially supportive. “We made idols with two tonnes of clay,” he says. The following year, they set up a distribution network in the city and have been popularising seed Ganeshas ever since. Today, their idols are available at around 15 shops in Coimbatore.
