Hamrapur, PEN: A winding road off the Mumbai Goa highway, sandwiched by shrubberies, leads us into a village where Lord Ganesha manifests in a variety of avatars. Every home has an idol sculptor or artisan. And every bend boasts of an idol-making workshop. At 9.30 am, it’s well into a busy day with karigars giving final touches to the last lot of Ganesh murtis that will leave this week for the festivities that kick off from August 31. Hamrapur, a three-hour drive from Mumbai, is among four villages, including Johe, Dadar Sagari and Kalave, in the Pen taluka of Raigad district, that form the heart of the state’s Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations. Every year, lakhs of idols leave from here, finding pride of place in people’s homes and sarvajanik pandals. “Not just in India, our idols go to the UK and US, Australia, the Arab countries and of late, Mauritius too,” a local artisan, tells us. With 450-plus workshops, Hamrapur is the epicentre of this business, bringing in crores annually into the under-developed village. It’s a Rs 100-crore industry in Pen, local journalist Deepak Shinde claims, although necessities like electricity still elude its residents.