Diwali diyas are bringing happiness. A Diwali diya is a small lamp that is lit especially at Diwali, which is New Year’s in India. They symbolize goodness and purity, and lighting them denotes dispelling darkness and going into the light. Diyas are typically made of clay with ghee or oil used as the fuel and cotton wool as the wick.

The lockdown kicked many poor people in the stomach, who had already been struggling hard for every penny, as well as for food. People migrated thousands of kilometers from big cities to their villages to save their lives.

Back in 2017, my love for nature inspired me to start making Gaushalas, which are protective shelters for cows in India. I was able to fetch a good amount of milk and manure but was not able to do anything very purposeful with it. The thought of creating eco-friendly products from gaushala had always been in the back of my mind, and that was when the idea of ecofriendly cow dung diyas came to me. I started implementing this idea as a pilot project when I went to my hometown of Maihar. We prepared diyas and gave them to local temples and shops which were appreciated by all.

This good response motivated me and worked as a catalyst for my next idea. We invited three women and a man who had lost their local jobs because of COVID 19 to work with us to make Diwali diyas. We started making them day and night so that we could make some good sales before Diwali. We made the diyas, packed them in corrugated boxes, and transported them to the big cities. Later, we also started making Lord Ganesh idols purely from cow dung. We made good sales during Ganesh Chaturthi, which brought a broad smile to the faces of our people who had lost their jobs because of the COVID situation.

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