Idols to home décor, festive season picks are increasingly being cast in metal

Traditional clay in Ganesh idols will be the emotional material of choice when the rush to welcome the lord begins in a little more than a month from now. But plaster of paris idols, though scoring low on eco-friendliness, will remain the softer option for buyers.

Metal, anyone? In the enduring Mahatma Phule Mandai area of the old city, brass Ganeshas have been flying off the shelves at Abhilash Lalwani’s ‘Gurukripa’ wholesale store in recent years. During the last season, he sold close to 500 larger ‘murtis’ and around 15,000 palm-sized and smaller ones. He sells by weight —a 2kg idol would go for around Rs 1,300 while it would be way costlier in the retail market where such items are sold per piece.

Lalwani (26), representing the sixth generation of his family in the business, says sales having kickstarted for the forthcoming festive season with Janmashtami, Ganeshotsav, Rakshabandhan and Diwali all lined up over the next few months. Otherwise too, his place is a delight for artefact-seekers and collectors with the cheapest miniatures selling for barely Rs 10 and the fancier, larger showpieces valued upwards of a lakh of rupees.

The four floors of Lalwani’s shop and even the staircases leading up are crammed with eye-catching stuff. Here one will find idols of Ganesh in various forms; the Buddha standing, at rest, in the alms-seeking pose or with the medicine bowl; the dancing Shiva, which is a rage among foreigners; the god of wealth Kuber, a much-sought after deity during Diwali; home décor items, many of them bearing a tribal influence; brass cameras, clocks and press emblems; and every conceivable home-necessity item ranging from basic lamps and ‘diyas’ to scissor-like wick-cutters.

The clientele

by an overwhelming majority here is Maharashtrian but Lalwani says there are takers aplenty from among the South Indians for his idols of Natraj, Vishnu and Balaji and the Gujaratis for the flute-playing Krishna and the ‘palna’ (cradle). He runs a small brass rod around the rim of a meditation bell to produce the ‘Om’ sound, saying these bells were much in demand at the Osho Ashram till the turn of the century.

Ganesh Kothari, the other big wholesaler in the city for such items, concurs that metal handicrafts, particularly those of brass and copper, are increasingly gaining in popularity. He has had brisk sales of brass idols, particularly Ganeshas, over the last 5-6 years at his shop, ‘Prabhu’, also in the Mandai area. Framed idols are passe, the preference is for ‘murtis’, he says. Besides, the value of any metal will always go up and a new brass or copper item purchased by selling an earlier one in scrap will be virtually for free, he points out. The value of brass alone has gone up by Rs 50 a kg since last year.

Kothari’s business is at least 50% more than usual around this time of the year. He says those buying brass Ganeshas from him are more tuned in to eco-friendliness and keep the idols for years while releasing a symbolic ‘pan supari’ Ganapati into the water on ‘visarjan’ day. The only eco-friendly disintegrating material for Ganesh idols is ‘shadu’ (clay) but how much of it can be made available for the crores of ‘murtis’ produced each year, he asks.

At Kothari’s multi-storeyed shop, 90% of the miniatures in stock are religious items. His store is also popular for modern art works like Natraj statues, ‘laman diyas’ (hanging lamps), bells and flower pots. The sale of items for corporate gifting peaks around Diwali. Copperware has a parallel sale here, with most of the items like the ‘kalshi’, ‘panchpatra’, ‘fulpatra’ and ‘pali’ being used for religious rituals.

Kothari’s store also brings in mostly Maharashtrian customers. But he points to a growing trend of people from different religious and cultural denominations buying brass Ganeshas as showpiece items for their homes. Like the Buddha, Ganesh too has become a universal god, he says.


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