Expired capsules, used vials, plastic spoons: Assam man fights waste with Durga idols

Sanjib Basak crafts his idols — made of waste — with the hope that people will look beyond devotion and festivity

Durga Puja makes Sanjib Basak happy and sad. Happy because he gets to craft his favourite Goddess, and sad because the earth bears the weight of the discarded materials used to create Her.

An amateur artist who taught fabric painting and handicraft before landing a job as a field officer in Assam’s Disaster Management Department, Mr. Basak turned to industrial and medical waste to express his creativity.

He found in Durga an “ally” to use his creativity as a statement to promote waste reduction.

His crusade against waste began in 2015 with a 14 ft Durga idol made of thermocol for a community puja in his hometown in western Assam’s Dhubri district. He followed it up with another thermocol idol, 48 ft tall, for a community puja in Guwahati’s Panbazar locality in 2016.

It wasn’t the only unconventional idol he made in 2016. Another idol, measuring 12 ft in height, was crafted from discarded aluminium net.

Mr. Basak deviated from non-biodegradable material to honour his 2017 assignment from a local committee by making an 8 ft tall Durga idol from cotton thread. In 2018, he crafted a 12 ft Durga idol from matchsticks but had his “way with waste” by creating an idol of Lord Ganesh from discarded plastic bottles that year.

“Both the idols of 2018 were featured in the India Book of Records. So was the 160 kg Durga idol made of waste electrical wires in 2019, albeit in the Assam Book of Records,” he told The Hindu from Dhubri district’s Bilasipara, where he is posted.