Ahmedabad: Ganesh pandals on air crash a big hit among devotees, victims’ kin

Under a black tent — the colour signifying mourning — and against the backdrop of a huge cutout of the charred hostel building of BJ Medical College, stands clay statues of Ganesha and his vaahan mushaka. They are dressed as firefighters, and 108 emergency staff members.

Talking about the photo of the hostel building used to make the cut-out in the backdrop, Rahul Rajput, Ganesh Yuva Mitra Mandal member, told The Indian Express: “We visited the site two-three weeks after the crash. That was when we took this photo.” He added that the pandal has been built at a cost of around Rs 1.5 lakh.

The committee has set up Ganesh pandals since 2011 on themes of ‘Indian Cricket Team after the 2011 World Cup victory against Sri Lanka’, ‘Save Birds’, ‘Amarnath Yatra’, ‘Radha Krishna’, among others.

Govt heaps praise

The Gujarat government has also sent out a note, heaping praise on the Ganesh pandal at Nani Hamam Ni Pol in Ghee Kanta for celebrating the work of the “state and central governments and private organisations”.

“Through this (pandal) we want to pay our tributes to the victims and salute the frontline warriors. That is the reason we have shown Lord Ganesh as health staff, policemen and mediapersons. We also want to send out a message of communal harmony. It was only the DNA that confirmed the identity of the bodies; no religion asked. We wanted to set up statues depicting the DNA testing process too, but there was a lack of space inside the pandal,” Chetan Rajput, another organiser told this paper.

The pandal is a hit among the locals as well as people from outside Ahmedabad. “We have devotees from Rajkot and other cities. There are family members of the crash victims visiting the pandal as well. The queue is unmanageable during the night,” Hardik Patel, 32, a volunteer said.

Looking at the high footfall, the pandal has to be kept open till 2 am, said organisers.

“A team of around six-seven staff members would be visiting the pandal. We visited some other pandals too but this will be a motivation for us,” Manoj Bhavsar, the 108 VoICE (Volunteers In Case of Emergency) told this paper.

Darshana Patel along with a group of five other women rode two-wheelers from Maninagar, another side of the city, to visit the pandal on Tuesday afternoon. “We heard about this pandal and decided to come here. We went to a few other pandals too in the vicinity, like Lal Darwaza, but this one is different,” she told The Indian Express.

Nearly seven-eight km from Ghee Kanta is another Ganesh Pandal that is also being talked about.

Set up in Saranagar, a little away from the main road, in an area housing vehicle repair centres, small shops, eateries, stands the pandal — with a thermocol airplane model hanging in the air at the entrance as its ‘landmark’.

“Since this pandal is a little away from the main road and people might find it difficult to locate, we have put this (airplane model) up for identification,” Praful C Parmar, one of the members of Saranagar Mitra Mandal. The committee, a small group of young people from the area, has been celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi since the last 15 years.

With a large Ganesh idol seated in the backdrop, the pandal shows the BJ Medical College hostel buildings in the form of thermocol cut-outs and the mess where the Air India plane crashed on June 12 afternoon.

While small dolls are dressed as victims and rescuers here, a firefighter is seen helping a “victim” outside the building.

Pointing at the doll dressed as the “victim,” Shivam, one of the committee members, who also runs a pharmacy, explains the theme: “This is Vishwas, the lone survivor of the plane crash. Hardly anyone knows how he survived and from where he had come out. Thus we placed him outside.”

The group of friends worked on the pandal for two months before Ganesh Chaturthi. “We took a room on rent for two months and would work on thermocol sheets, preparing these models at night, once we would be free from our jobs. It did not cost us much… around Rs 15000-20,000… since we re-used most of the material from our previous pandal, which was set up on the theme of Lalbaugcha Ganpati of Mumbai,” Parmar adds.

“So far we have had visitors from Mumbai, Bavla, Rajkot, Daman and Diu. Everyone who has come here has only appreciated the message of peace to the departed souls of the victims and the dedication and hard work of all these agencies,” said Shivam.