Crusader-cum-satirist Aabid Surti receives the Club’s Taru Lalvani Award for Environment Protection
Mr Aabid Surti
Has one ever heard of an award for environmental protection being presented to a satirist-cum-cartoonist?
Such an improbable occurrence took place at the last meeting when the Rotary Club of Bombay Taru Lalvani award for Environment Protection was presented to Mr. Aabid Surti who is well known as a painter, illustrator, artiste and satirist.
What few know is that he has been waging a lonely war to save every drop of water by going to people’?s houses and helping fix their leaking taps.
He has been doing this for over seven years in the sprawling suburb of Mira Road where he knocks on residents’ doors every Sunday morning. He is accompanied by a plumber who carries a bag full of O-rings (gaskets or washers) and repairs the leaks.
Although he has formed an NGO called Drop Dead (with the tagline: Save every drop, or drop dead), his is clearly a thankless job. No one ever asked him to take up such a campaign, no one pays for the cost of the washers, the salary of the plumber, or even for the time that Mr. Surti spends every Sunday morning.
He started by spending from his pocket, diverting award monies received to the cause; over the years he has received a few big and many small contributions from those who have heard about his mission and have been touched by it.
In fact, at the last meeting, he received close to Rs. 1 lakh for his work a cheque for Rs. 40,000 as part of the Taru Lalvani Award for Environment Protection and a sum of Rs.50,000 as a spontaneous donation from some members.
Dolly Thakore, who introduced Mr. Surti, pointed out that as a graphic artiste he had created a cartoon strip called “Dablooji” which ran for over 30 years.
While some people remembered him as a writer or as a painter, few were aware of the fact that he was a screen writer for two outstanding film directors, Raj Khosla and Raj Kapoor, and had written several plays, too. One of these plays, he recalled, had been reviewed by her (Dolly).
Mr. Surti had also written the dialogue for Hungama Bombay Ishtyle, a children.s film directed by Ayesha Sayani.
One of his books was titled Sufi which was a reportage mixed with a story of two living characters, one of them the author himself and the other a man called Iqbal who was “?king”? of the underworld and under whom Dawood Ibrahim worked as a youth.
“The book covers most of the prominent facts and figures related to the rise of the organised Muslim crime world in Bombay. It’s a must-read.”
Dolly went on to describe in detail Mr. Surti’s campaign to conserve every drop of water in suburban Mira Road over the last seven years.
After the introduction, Emma and Jetu Lalvani presented the Rotary Club of Bombay Taru Lalvani Award for Environment Protection to Mr. Aabid Surti.
There was prolonged applause as President Nowroze Vazifdar joined them.
The award consisted of a memento and a cheque for Rs. 40,000.
MY STORY IS NOT FROM RAGS TO RICHES, IT’S FROM RAGS TO HAPPINESS,SAYS ARTISTE AABID SURTI
The following is a verbatim account of the acceptance speech delivered by Mr. Aabid Surti after receiving the Rotary Club of Bombay Taru Lalvani Award for Environment Protection at the last meeting.
I think Dolly has said everything that I wanted to say and as there is nothing left to say, I will take up the basic question, one that every journalist, every person who meets me asks, “How did you get the idea, this simple idea?”
My answer to that question is, because I grew up on the pavement. We were living in a chawl, a single room in which the whole family of about 15 people was living… So there was no place to sleep, no water and, as Dolly said, we had to fight for every bucket. I carried that legacy, that memory with me; it affected me so much that I could not forget it.
As I grew up, whenever I went to a friend’s house or visited people, I used to note that at least one tap, either in the kitchen or in the bathroom or the toilet, was leaking. I could hear the sound of dripping water from at least one tap. I would request them to please do something about it. They would say yes, they would do it.
But it was just a drop of water, so why worry about just a drop? When I went to their house again, say after six months, the dripping was still on. These were educated people.
Then I realised that the problem lay in poor plumbing. Some builders, to save money, went for a cheap plumbing system which destroyed everything.
Apart from this, plumbers charged about Rs. 100 to Rs. 400 per visit and poor families could not afford to call a plumber for such a petty job. They were hard-working people, struggling to earn their bread, where would they get the money to call a plumber just to stop the dripping? So the dripping went on, for months and even for years.
I also noted that the maximum leakage was in old buildings. In new buildings, the builders had gone for a good plumbing system and good quality taps so that leakages hardly took place; there were perhaps one or two taps that dripped in an entire apartment building.
But in poor localities, in buildings with just two floors, we have had to work for about two weeks.
The point I want to make is that all of this affected me psychologically and I started feeling frustrated within.
Around that time, I read in the Hindustan Times that if one drop of water dripped in one second, then in one month 1,000 litres of water went down the drain.
This hit me very hard. When I mentioned it to people, they would say, let that one drop drip, why do you worry about it? I had no answer to that.
But this did not deter me; in fact, it encouraged me and made me think about doing something. An idea soon came to me. When the idea came to me, I started wondering how to implement it. If I were to go to people’?s houses with a plumber, I would have to buy gasket rings and other things, I would have to go to and fro between different apartment buildings.
As I thought about this aspect, I got the news that I would be getting an award of Rs. 1 lakh for my literature. This was totally unexpected. And the thought came to me that this award had not come to me for literature, it had come to me for my project. So the money was not mine.
I put it in the bank in the name of the Drop Dead Foundation and started my work.
In four years, from 2007 to 2010, the money was over because I was also spending it for publicity, for T-shirts, posters and on other ways to make more people aware.
As the money got over in 2010, I thought that I had done my job, that I had inspired many people and that I should close down.
But then I received another award of Rs. 50,000, a lifetime achievement award from the Maharashtra government. So once again, from 2010 to 2012, the mission was on and then again the money was spent. I again started thinking about folding up, but another award came my way last month, another award of Rs. 50,000.
What I want to convey to you is that if your intentions are clear, if you sincerely wish to do something good for others, He will take care of you, you don’t have to go to anybody with a begging bowl for funds. He becomes your fund-raiser. It has happened with me.
Another point. There are so many temptations if you are running an NGO; even though mine is a one-man NGO, yet there are many temptations.
Somebody, a very sincere friend of mine from Gujarat, said that he had arranged Rs. 13 lakhs from the State government for funding my NGO. I said, if someone is giving money willingly, he is most welcome.
But he said there was a slight hitch. I would have to return Rs. 5 lakhs. I said to him, why just Rs. 5 lakhs, tell him to keep Rs. 13 lakhs! I didn?t accept it.
What I want to stress is that if there is sincerity and honesty, you will get help.
I got another offer, this one from the Maharashtra government, but again with the same string attached. I would have to return a few lakhs. I said I don’t want the money.
Mahatma Gandhi has said, if your foundation is weak, if your foundation is corrupt, then your whole building is corrupt and it is going to fall like a pack of cards as we have seen recently in Mumbra.
The message is, don’t go for underhand dealings, be straight, be honest to yourself and everything will work out beautifully.
Aabid Surti says he is trying to inspire the common man citizens to take up his campaign to save every drop man and senior drop of water
The point he was trying to make was that it was best to be “pure” with one’s self. If he had accepted Rs. 13 lakhs from the Gujarat government and returned Rs. 5 lakhs, he would have had to make adjustments with a third person and the whole enterprise would have turned into a mess.
“Plus, I would not be happy with myself, I would lose my sleep. Right now I am the happiest man and my story is not from rags to riches but from rags to happiness!”
Hon. Secretary Sitaram Shah said he was reminded of his college days when a professor visited his hostel and told the students that a poor country could not afford to have leaking taps. This was very true, because almost all the taps in the hostel were leaking.
The professor had pointed out that India was very poor and yet there was maximum wastage of water here. How could this wastage at the grassroots be tackled?
Mr. Surti said it was difficult to correct the mindset of grown-ups because they were not open to ideas. Therefore, he was motivating school children. Every year, he organised a rally with school children in Mira Road.
He gave them posters and asked them to paste these in their buildings and societies so that people would see them and become aware and conscious about the problem.
“There are a thousand children in one school… I am going to cover more schools. The best way is to create awareness amongst children. If you put the seed now, it will grow very beautifully,” Mr. Surti added.
HOW AABID SURTI STARTED HIS CRUSADE TO CONSERVE WATER
Dolly Thakore said while introducing Mr. Aabid Surti, who received the Rotary Club of Bombay Taru Lalvani Award for Environment Protection at the last meeting, that there was a fascinating aspect to his life. And that was his commitment to a social cause.
His was an inspiring true story that showed how simple it was for one person with an idea to make a difference.
A few years ago, when he was invited to New Delhi to meet the President of India and receive a national award for literature, he politely declined.He was absorbed in writing the draft of a novel, he said, so he did not have the time.
But what he had made time for every Sunday for seven years was going door-to-door in Mira Road, a non-descript suburb of Bombay, with a plumber in tow and asking residents whether they needed any leaking taps fixed for free.
As a distinguished painter and author, Mr. Surti had written about 80 books but no story had moved him as much as one about water scarcity on the planet.
“I read an interview of the former UN Chief, Mr. Boutros-Boutros Ghali,” he recalled, ?who said that by 2025 more than 40 countries were expected to experience a water crisis.
“And I remembered my childhood in a ghetto, fighting for each bucket of water. I knew that shortage of water is the end of civilized life.”
Around that time, in 2007, he was at a friend’s place where he noticed a leaky tap. It bothered him. When he pointed it out, his friend, like anyone else, dismissed it casually; it was too expensive and inconvenient to call a plumber for such a minor job; besides, even plumbers were not keen on coming over to replace an old gasket.
But a few days later Mr. Surti came across a statistic in a newspaper which said that a tap that dripped once every second wasted 1,000 litres of water in a month.
That triggered an idea. He would take a plumber from door to door and fix taps for free, visiting one apartment complex every weekend.
As a creative artist, he had earned more goodwill than money and the first challenge was funding. “But”, he believed, “if you have a noble thought, nature takes care of it.”
Within a few days, he learnt that he was being awarded Rs. 1,00,000 by the Hindi Sahitya Sansthan of UP for his contribution to Hindi literature.
And so, one Sunday morning in 2007, which was the International Year of Water, he set out with a plumber to fix problem taps for his neighbours. He began by simply replacing old O ring rubber gaskets with new ones, buying them from the wholesale market.
He formed a one-man NGO called “Drop Dead” and even created a tagline for it: Save every drop Or drop dead.
Every Sunday, the “Drop Dead” team which consisted of Mr. Surti himself, Riyaaz the plumber and a female volunteer called Tejal picked apartment blocks, got permission from the housing societies and got to work.
A day before, Tejal handed out pamphlets explaining the mission and pasted posters in elevators and apartment lobbies spreading awareness about the looming water crisis. By Sunday afternoon, the team of three ensured that all the taps in the building were drip-dry.
At the end of the first year this team had visited 1,533 homes and fixed around 400 taps.
In 2010, Mr. Surti was nominated for the CNN-IBN CJ “Be The Change” award. In the same year, a television crew from Berlin flew down to follow him on his Sunday rounds which continued come rain or shine.
It was hard to say how much water he had saved through his mission, given that the faucets he fixed would have continued leaking for months, even years, had he not rung the doorbell one Sunday morning. But conservatively, it could be estimated that he had single-handedly saved at least 5.5 million litres of water.
As Maharashtra faced its worst drought in 40 years, the State’s Chief Minister had already warned citizens to begin conserving water. And while Ministers lobbied for drought-relief packages worth crores of rupees, Mr. Surti saw his own approach as one that was simple and inexpensive.
“Anyone can launch a water conservation project in his or her area. That’s the beauty of this concept. It doesn’t require much funding or even an office. And, most importantly, it puts the power back in our own hands. ”
Dolly added: “We salute you, Mr. Surti.”