This is one annual happy story with an extremely sad ending – year after year. While the Durga Puja holds our breath with its food, fun, frolic and fervor every year, and has graduated from a festival meant for Bengalis to one that evokes pan-India sentiments these days, the immersion of idols on Vijaya Dashami, or the day of the Dussehra, leaves a sorry montage of our ignorance, apathy and nonchalance at the immersion sites.

Like immersion of other idols in other parts of the country, the remnants of the five-day festivities come with their own share of mini eco disasters every year.

Significantly, the Allahabad High Court had last year banned immersion of Durga Puja idols in the Yamuna and the Ganga after the pujas in Uttar Pradesh – a decision it upheld earlier this month. But it seems there is no stopping the ‘devotees’ still.

Here are some shots by GN lensman ARUN KUMAR from the visarjan in the Yamuna on Sunday and Monday – in Delhi, outside the ambit of the Allahabad HC’s ruling but on a stretch of a dying river that is perhaps at its polluted worst.

What’s interesting, at least one puja committee in the capital’s backyard immersion its idols in an eco-friendly fashion. According to reports, Dakshinapalli Durga Puja Samiti in Pocket 52 of CR Park in south Delhi immersed its biodegradable idols in water tanks (read the report here). Time the others took a lesson and gave some respite, and a lease of life, to the Yamuna.