The goodbye we give to Ganesha today is not divine, it's dirty.
Most statues today are not made of clay, they are made of something called POP, Plaster of Paris.
It looks smooth and shiny but it's actually a chemical material. And the problem is, POP does not dissolve in water at all. So after the After immersion, these idols just float around for days, and later, municipal workers collect the broken pieces and dump them in landfills like ordinary waste.
This is really the goodbye our Ganesha deserves.
Every year, Mumbai alone generates 2 thousand tons of festival waste, and the paint we use is full of mercury and... Lead poisons our rivers, kills fish, and chokes entire ecosystems.
But clay Ganeshas dissolve in just a few hours, merging back into the earth exactly the way our ancestors intended. Because a true pooja with love means sending Bappa back to Mother Nature with dignity, not to the garbage.