PEN, INDIA, August 11, 2015 (Malay Mail): Recently married, Namrata Raut returned to her family home in rural western India to paint hundreds of Ganesha statues ahead of a major Hindu festival celebrating the elephant-headed Deity. Pen, in Maharashtra state, is renowned for its exquisitely designed and beautifully colored statues of the auspicious God, which are sold around the world providing the lifeblood of this small community.
“There are about 350 workshops in the town and they all require many artists,” Raut tells AFP, putting the finishing touches on another brightly painted carving of Hinduism’s most recognizable God. In the weeks leading up to Ganesh Chaturthi around 250,000 statues are made in workshops lining the streets of Pen, a town of 30,000 people around 50 miles outside Mumbai. The workshops in Pen are taking note, increasingly making eco-friendly Deities out of natural clay that dissolve in water rather than less biodegradable plaster.
This year’s Ganesh Chaturthi runs from September 17 to 27 and culminates with the statues being ritually immersed in water. Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, traditionally hosts some of the largest gatherings with tens of thousands immersing statues in the Arabian Sea at beaches along the city’s coast.