The
10-day Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Hinduism commemorates the birth of Ganesh,
the elephant-headed god of prosperity, new beginnings, and wisdom. Every year,
a group called Natraj Club in the Indian city of Sambalpur in
the state of Odisha pays their respects to the Hindu god by erecting an epic
statue of him out of various materials. The 11 members made a 25-foot-tall
Ganesh statue out of five metric tons (roughly 5.5 tons) of bananas in 2017.
The
colossal figure which is made up of thousands of green, unripened bananas, took
75 days to complete. Other natural materials were also used to create
decorative details. “While the ornaments and tilak for Lord were made of
bamboo, we created the eyes using banana leaves,” says Gopal Pansari, the
club's art director. The fruit, however, did not go to waste. After the
festival when the bananas had turned yellow, they were distributed to the poor.
Most
Ganesh figures are made of plastic or other non-biodegradable materials during
the festival but Natraj Club takes pride in using reusable, edible materials in
their annual masterpieces. They used biodegradable materials like coconuts,
sweet boondi ladoos, and conch shells to recreate the Ganesh god in previous
years.
Below are
some of the Natraj Club's statues from previous years, as well as the banana
Ganesh sculpture.
Natraj
Club created a massive 25-foot-tall Ganesh statue out of five metric tons of
bananas for the Ganesh Chaturthi festival.
11 people
make a new sculpture every year out of biodegradable materials.
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