Offerings to Mother Ganga, Worries About Mother Nature
Dorothea Poggi marched past the muddy cricket fields and weathered picnic benches to a little stretch of beach in Ferry Point Park in the Bronx. She padded in sneakers on the damp sand littered with coconut shells, synthetic flowers and wet coils of golden yellow fabric. Plunging a hand between the reeds, she picked up a water-faded picture of a goddess with four arms and raven black hair.
“Look, this is her,” said Ms. Poggi, 55, a signmaker and the founder of the Ferry Point Park West Coalition, a community group. “I think the ritual is beautiful. I just wish they would stuff it in the garbage pail.”
The picture is of Mother Ganga, the Hindu goddess of the river, and the ritual in question involves offerings to her that are made on the banks of Westchester Creek. According to Pandit Vishnu Sukul, the priest of the 500-member Vishnu Mandir temple in the Unionport section, the ritual, which is held year round, involves floating yards of yellow fabric topped with offerings of fruit, flowers, incense and money while prayers are said. In Ferry Point Park, the offering material, which also sometimes includes pictures like the one Ms. Poggi found, is often left behind.
“It just doesn’t go away,” Ms. Poggi said, sighing. “In the summer, there’s at least 30 times what’s here.”
Mr. Sukul said he had recently addressed the issue by instructing his temple’s members not to leave ritual material on the beach, as it is “not really environmentally friendly.” He has also made announcements about it on “Voice of Hinduism,” his weekly program on BronxNet television.
Still, Mr. Sukul conceded: “I cannot control all the Hindus in the Bronx. I can only control my population.”
Ms. Poggi has tried to tackle the problem by organizing annual beach cleanups and by talking to Hindu groups she sees coming to the park with black trash bags full of ceremonial items. In the park one day last week, she was pleased to spot a stretch of fabric billowing out from a trash can.
“Just seeing that in the garbage pail makes me feel better,” she said. “The ritual is not to poison the water. If it’s not biodegradable, it shouldn’t go in.”
