The Tilve family from Nageshi is busier than ever. Twenty-six-year old Girish Tilve, along with his father and younger brother, is occupied with the work of adding final touches to the 130 clay Ganesh idols that they have sculpted tirelessly over the last two months, knowing that in the next few minutes, they will be sold out. The Tilve family chooses to physically work on one idol after the, over the convenience of using moulds to churn out idols made out of Plaster of Paris (PoP). Girish says, “In the past couple of years, preference to idols made out of PoP has declined. People have realised that PoP does not dissolve easily in water and hence the idol floats after immersion. At times, the idol breaks and its pieces are seen scattered everywhere which is a painful sight. This amounts to extreme denigration of the deity and I feel that the deity should be offered the same reverence when immersing it as when it is invoked.” The Tilve family is one of the few idol-makers in Goa that insist on making
Ganesh idols only out of clay and strictly refrain from using PoP unlike most others. But they do have the company of a select few who also follow the same school of thought.
Another clay artist from Ponda, Jagdish Khandeparkar, feels that there is a difference between idols made out of clay and plaster of Paris. Jagdish says, “There are references in the mythological texts that Ganapati was created from grime. Hence it is appropriate to use a Ganesh idol made of clay for ritualistic worship. Also, spiritually, the pure spiritual particles of Ganapati get attracted to a greater extent towards an idol made of clay than to that made of Plaster of Paris.” Kedar Umanath Naik, who lives few metres away from the Tilve residence, has also been painstakingly shaping Lord Ganesh out of clay with his father. The 21 year old clay artist belongs to the fifth generation of the Naik family that is continuing the tradition of idol-making. Kedar says, “We begin the clay work in June and finish making the idols by the end of July. The colour work begins only in August.
Furthermore, we use only watercolours to make it ecofriendly, thereby eliminating the possibility of pollution.”
