Artificial Ponds Ease Immersion Rush

HYDERABAD: Families who once waited for hours at Hussainsagar found themselves completing the Ganesh idol immersion in less than half the time at the city’s artificial ponds. On Necklace Road, brothers Ramakanth and Shashikant from Attapur came with their wives and children in two cars and said the immersion took less than an hour from the time they arrived.

“We started around 11 and reached in less than an hour. The Begumpet route had no traffic,” one of them said. They recalled how Hussainsagar meant long delays in the past. “It is always crowded there. Once stuck, you can neither go back nor ahead. Here it is simple, no disturbance for the family. People can immerse and leave. So, we have been coming since last year.”

This artificial pond on Necklace Road was designed for exactly that kind of ease, filled with eight feet of water specially for Nimajjanam. Two cranes and a JCB were stationed there along with ten mobile toilets along the pavements and around fifteen police and GHMC staff moved who had been there for the past six days. Manu, a worker stationed there all week, said, “We are getting paid, and to make more, we stay back. My brother gets me food,” he explained.

Most of the crew, he added, came from the same family and were hired by contractors. The tips, he admitted with a grin, made the hard work bearable. “Some give ten or twenty, sometimes even five hundred. My job is to fix the idols on the crane and let them down into the pond.” Officials at the artificial pond counted more than a hundred immersions there by noon on Saturday, including twenty idols between six and seven feet tall; there was hardly any queue or traffic.

The order in smaller tanks, however, stood in contrast to the chaos at Tank Bund, where immersion cranes worked non-stop as trucks kept arriving from Old City, Secunderabad and beyond. Although police diverted traffic, most people preferred going to Hussainsagar. In an interesting conversation near Hussainsagar, a son was seen trying to convince his mother about dissolving their eco-friendly idol at home and later pouring that somewhere. “That is what people are doing these days, it is convenient and makes sense,” he remarked as his mother watched a damaged idol being pulled out by a crane after immersion.

Mammoth ops

GHMC control rooms counted close to 2.55 lakh immersions through the day.

Over 1.6 lakh idols stood taller than three feet.

Khairatabad zone topped the list with more than 62,000 idols, Kukatpally 59,000, Serilingampally 40,000, LB Nagar and Secunderabad 36,000 each and Charminar under 20,000.

15,000 sanitation workers deployed in three shifts, clearing waste along the routes and at the ponds.

Medical camps with doctors and ambulances were on standby.

Free food was served to about 5,000 devotees at People’s Plaza and Prasad’s IMAX.

Water Board set up 123 drinking water camps and distributed over 35 lakh water packets.