Goemkarponn Desk
MARGAO: Thinking out of the box, the Margao Congress Block celebrated “Vatt Purnima” by distributing saplings of trees to the women who gathered to perform the Vat Purnima rituals. The team comprised of Adv. Snehal Onskar, Radha Kavlekar, Lalan Parsekar, Sujata Parsekar, Sureka Gawas, Soni Mishra and Pratibha Alvares.
Margao Congress leader Savio Coutinho stated that the Green cover of the city is constantly decreasing with massive construction activity and brutal felling of trees to make way for development activity and also in the guise of trimming. Celebration of Vat Purnima reqires the existence of Vat(Banyan) tree in the first place. However we see nowadays that the married women are compelled to conduct the Vat Purnima rituals by taking Banyan tree branches at home and conduct the same; not only on account of time constraints, but primarily because Banyan trees are not available in the nearby vicinity, Coutinho said. The Margao Congress block therefore thought of the novel idea of distributing saplings, of Oak trees and also other tree saplings like Apto, Dhoop, Jagma, Otamb, Zambul, Kokum, Zam etc. We have full guarantee that since the sapling will be planted on this most auspicious day, full care will be taken by the lady planter who will ensure that it survives to grows into a tree, Coutinho stated with confidence.
Vat Purnima is celebrated by married Hindu women by observing fast and praying for their husbands long life. It holds significant importance in the Hindu religion and is considered a lucky day in the year. “Our ladies in the Margao Congress block decided to be a part of this celebration, and since the occasion is directly linked to the nature and banyan tree in particular, we decided to distribute saplings of trees to the women,” informed Ex-Councillor Smt. Radha Kavlekar.
Adv. Snehal Onskar narrated the story behind the celebration of Vat Purnima giving details of how Savitri through her immense love and wisdom was able to save the life of her husband Satyavan.
Women are known to be committed to a cause once they take up something seriously in mind. And hence we distributed the saplings and appealed to them to make the sapling planted on this auspicious day, a part of the family, and nurse the sapling till it grows up into a tree, Smt. Lalan Parsekar said.
Smt. Pratibha Alvares explained the importance of taking up the cause of making our environment greener and healthier. The climate change on account of the dwindling number of trees is causing unbearable increase in temperature.
The women who came to perform the Vat Purnima rituals were all praise for the unique initiative of the Margao Congress block and very gracefully and positively accepted the saplings.