In November 2012, Punjab-based attorney, Kamaljeet Singh Hayer, lost his grandfather. The grand old man passed away at the age of 101. During his memorial service, a local MLA walked up to Singh, saying, “Your grandfather lived such a long and fulfilling life.”

This pushed Kamaljeet to introspect on the massive health shift between his grandfather and successive generations. His grandfather had passed without any ailments or a single day in a hospital, but his father died at 53 due to a massive heart attack, and his 10-year-old brother died of a brain tumour!

It was only a matter of time until the lawyer concluded that our health was directly related to the food on our plates.

“You are what you eat. It is an irrefutable fact that our ancestors, including our grandparents, ate nutritious food and led a simple life. Their food wasn’t doused in chemicals, and they did not lead a sedentary lifestyle. They toiled hard in the fields to grow their food,” he says, in an interview with The Better India.

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And so, in 2012, the lawyer who was earning almost Rs 1.5 lakh a month, decided to switch to organic farming. For the first three years, he juggled his legal profession along with agriculture. In 2015 though, he quit his job to become a full-time natural farmer.

He toiled and poured his sweat and blood into the pesticide-ridden dead soil and converted 20 acres of his family land into a biodiversity-based natural farm. This farm, in the village of Sohangarh (Rattewala) near Guru Harsahai town in Ferozepur district, not only makes his kitchen independent but also fetches him a stable and substantial income.

In conversation with The Better India, he narrates the story of how it all began.

Having no background in farming, Kamaljeet spent a long time studying organic farming online. He came across the website of Kheti Virasat Mission (KVM) and called its Executive Director, Umendra Dutt, who invited him to attend a meeting of organic farmers.

“Umendra told us some eye-opening facts. He added how Punjab owned 1.5 per cent of the agricultural land in India, and yet, it used 18 per cent chemicals on its farms. He added that Punjab was a dying civilisation. It was no more an agricultural crisis but a struggle for survival. I couldn’t sleep that night. I wondered what I would do with Rs 1.5 lakh a month when I couldn’t use it to save my father or my brother. I am approaching 40, and if I didn’t do anything, my family and I would have a similar end.”

One of the turning points in his agricultural journey came when Umendra suggested that Kamaljeet attend a workshop organised by renowned scientist and organic farming stalwart, Dr Om Prakash Rupela. The scientist hailed from Hyderabad was adept at speaking Punjabi, and was leading the organic farming movement in Punjab.

“At the workshop, we raised questions about how states like Andhra Pradesh and Sikkim were moving towards organic farming, and yet farmers in Punjab were resistant to the switch. The conclusion was that Punjabi farmers wouldn’t believe anything until they witnessed a successful model. Dr Rupela suggested that he would set up a model that would inspire more farmers to make this organic switch.”

Kamaljeet, at the time, had never set foot on his agricultural land, had no labourers or experience in farming, and yet, he raised his hand and asked Dr Rupela to use his land for the model.

“When he asked me about my profession and package, I was honest. After knowing that I had zero knowledge about agriculture and earned Rs 1.5 lakh a month as a legal professional, he was astonished. He explained to me that the path I wanted to take was not going to be easy. He told me I would regret my decision.”

When Dr Rupela returned to Hyderabad, Singh called him every single day until he agreed to give the project a chance.

Dr Rupela analysed the quality of soil and water on the 20-acre patch that Kamaljeet had demarcated for the project, and found the soil doused in chemicals. According to him, it was practically dead and reviving it was a losing battle.

But Kamaljeet insisted that they continue the project. They began their work formally in January 2013.

The five components that Dr Rupela highlighted for the success of organic farming were diversity in crops, trees, livestock, birds, and microorganisms.

“In addition to his knowledge, Dr Rupela incorporated principles from successful models of experts like Subhash Palekar and Deepak Sachdev. He consulted international experts too. In six months, he created a design for the farm. His vision was to set that model up in three years.”

Meanwhile, fate had other plans. In 2015, Kamaljeet decided to quit law and become a full-time natural farmer to commit to the cause. But there was massive resistance from his family.

“My family wasn’t supportive of the idea. They thought I had gone mad. My wife even threatened to leave me at the time. But I had decided to quit my legal practice anyway.”

Six months into 2015, Dr Rupela was diagnosed with cancer, and passed away soon after. It was a shock and a loss that Kamaljeet has not fully recovered from.

“I felt orphaned. I was clueless and lost and cried for days. But my family and friends from KVM supported me. They told me to fulfil Dr Rupela’s vision. It took me a lot of trial and error and almost five years to complete this unique model.”

What makes this farm unique?

On 20 acres, the farm boasts of 1,500 trees of 120 different species. These are a mix of fruits, medicinal, forest and nitrogen-fixing trees, with shade area taking three acres of land. The rest of the farmland is used to grow and harvest more than 50 seasonal crops every year.

It also has a small pasture with herbs for cattle to produce nutritious milk and graze on. Moreover, there is a pond that harvests rainwater and canal water to meet farm needs.

Apart from rabi crops like wheat, black gram, chickpeas, flax seeds, lentils, pulses, yellow mustard, he also grows seasonal vegetables like radishes, carrots, spinach, coriander, potatoes, tomatoes, chillies, and four varieties of cauliflower.

Some of the kharif crops include bajra (kodo millet), jowar (sorghum), black rice, red rice, sugarcane, arbi (Taro root), turmeric. He also grows 20 varieties of fruits such as falsa (black currant), sapota, guava, shahtoot (mulberries), pomegranate, peach, plums, grapes, figs, mangoes, black plum, amla (Indian gooseberry), sweet lime, and orange.

The farm has more than 50 types of herbs like lemongrass, stevia, and basil, as well as 25 native livestock, including cows, buffaloes, goats, poultry, and birds.

The farmer, who has recently started cultivating millet, believes in adding value to any product he puts on sale. He processes finger millet to make biscuits that are sold at Rs 500 per kg, black gram is converted into besan (gram flour) or bhujiyas, and wheat is served in the form of porridge or seviyan (vermicelli). In addition to selling fruits directly, he also converts them into jams and pickles.

Apart from using jeevamrutham to nourish the soil, he mulches the crop residue back into the soil. He also turns it into compost along with the livestock excreta.

Some of his important nitrogen-fixing trees include Moringa Oleifera and Khejri. The dry leaves, stems and roots of these trees, when in contact with the soil, convert atmospheric gas into nitrogen. When grown next to fruit trees, they improve yield too.

Some of the medicinal trees grown include neem, calotropis, and chaste tree. These leaves are soaked in cow urine or boiled in water and sprayed on the leaves of plants to protect them from pests and diseases.

Kamaljeet vouches for inter-cropping and multi-cropping and insists on growing native varieties of the crops. Apart from preserving these seeds, he also sells most of his farm produce locally.

A shift in the existing model

Weeds are one of the leading issues he grapples with. To tackle them, he thought of the following trials:

a) Instead of harvesting the Kharif crop, he incorporated the biomass into the soil to nourish it.

b) He used the no-tillage method for three acres of land which will not be cultivated for two years.

With these two underway, he plans a third method, which requires creating a fruit forest.

To fulfil his mentor’s vision, he has laid the foundation stone for a training centre. Once the construction is completed, he aims to conduct training sessions for farmers there every quarter.

Currently, his farm has a daily footfall of 20-50 visitors, most of whom are farmers. He has been conducting free training sessions for them every month.

He signs off with a message for his kisaan-saathis, saying, “Natural farming is difficult. So if you decide to undertake it, accept this challenge head-on. Also, understand that it is the only avenue that can help us improve our health. I encourage farmers to practice self-sufficient farming, which doesn’t turn them into slaves of the market. As a lawyer, I couldn’t stay at home in my village for a single day. But as a farmer, I don’t go to the city for long stretches because I am independent of the market and all my sales happen on my farm. So my message is, begin small. Start with a kitchen garden. Make it independent. This will ensure that you don’t use pesticides or chemicals on your crops. Once you have garnered enough experience, move to a commercial model.”

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If this story inspired you, get in touch with Kamaljeet on 9804072072.

(Edited by Shruti Singhal)

Images Courtesy: Kamaljeet Singh Hayer

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I was 5 when I was gifted my first bicycle by my parents; it was pink and had bright orange tassels on the handlebar.

I still have a mark on my knee from when I fell while trying to ride without the training wheels. Not one to give up, I persisted on learning to ride without them, and soon enough, was able to.

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While I do not remember the brand of the bicycle that my parents gifted me, Hero Cycles, a homegrown brand which came into being in 1944, has undoubtedly been a part of countless such moments.

It all began when Brijmohan Lall Munjal and his three brothers, Dayanand Munjal, Satyanand Munjal, and Om Prakash Munjal who belonged to Kamalia, which is now in Pakistan, started a bicycle spare parts business in Amritsar.

Business was slow and was further affected by the partition, so the brothers decided to shift base to Ludhiana. In 1956, they acquired a license from the Punjab government to set up a cycle factory named Hero Cycles, with a bank loan of about Rs 50,000.

In 1975, this company became the largest manufacturer of bicycles in India with a production of 7500 cycles per day. By 1986 they were producing over 18,500 cycles a day, earning them a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest cycle manufacturer in the world.

In 1984, the company went from making bicycles to entering the motorcycle business as well and forged an alliance with Honda Motor Company.

It would be accurate to say that even before ‘Make in India’ became a thing; this company started the trend. Another interesting point is how well the family stuck with each other. Four brothers started the company, and by the turn of the 21st century, there 21 family members in the business.

The founder–OP Munjal

Born in 1927 to Bahadur Chand Munjal and Thakur Devi, Munjal grew up observing his father deal with the farmers, whose produce he stocked in his wholesale shop. It is perhaps, there, that his tryst with entrepreneurship began.

In the book titled, The Inspiring Journey of a Hero, writer Priya Kumar allows the reader to get a glimpse into the mind and workings of OP Munjal. She writes about how Munjal acquired traits from both his parents.

While being diligent and honest to one’s profession was what he imbibed from his father, from his mother he got the ability to be a people’s person and had a keen sense of what people around him needed.

In the book, Priya also writes about how he was also a very diligent student and also the youngest volunteer at the community service camp organised during the famine that struck Bengal.

Known to have a keen interest in writing Urdu poetry, it was said that he would often greet his guests by reciting couplets that he had written. He would carry a notebook with him, which he referred to as ‘The Hero Diary’ and each year dealers, employees, customers and vendors would receive the diary as their New Year gift.

The journey from poet to entrepreneur

As the business started doing well and spreading its wings overseas, more and more people started talking about the brand and the man behind building it.

It is therefore not surprising that Munjal earned the moniker ‘Cycle Man of India.’ He was responsible for ensuring that Ludhiana got a unique identity of being the city of cycles and also ensured that India entered the international club as a leading cycle manufacturer.

In fact, in an interview published in the Indian Express, Onkar Singh Pahwa, the MD of Avon Cycles, said, “Ludhiana is synonymous with Hero Cycles – a company that entered the Guinness book in 1986 for being the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer and put the city on the world map.”

So dedicated was Munjal to the job that he never let anything get in the way of his work. This report in MoneyLife points to this very trait.

When he started, Munjal would sell his cycles at his price but never make anyone suffer a loss.

When the factory had to be shut down, following a general strike in Punjab, he rolled up his sleeves with a spray can in hand and assembled the cycles.

When the workers eventually returned, the gates were closed, and they stayed on overnight to avoid getting caught in the violence.

When truck-drivers went on a strike, he chose to transport cycles by buses. When the dollar rate fluctuated favourably giving him a windfall, he decided to share the gains with the management, the employees and dealers in equal measure!

From manufacturing 25 cycles a day, Hero Cycles now makes more than five million cycles per year. According to a report in YourStory, while its primary production unit in Ludhiana is fully equipped with an in-house R&D facility producing major bicycle components, the company exports to over 70 countries, including Germany, Poland, Africa, and Finland with an approximate network of over 250 suppliers and 2800 dealerships.

A turning point of sorts for the company came about with its collaboration with the Japanese automobile conglomerate Honda. According to this report in Money Control, Hero Honda was a ‘never before and never again moment’ in India’s two-wheeler industry.

Hero Honda initiated its first assembly line in Dharuhera, Haryana, and the first 100cc Hero Honda motorcycle came off the assembly line in April 1985.

With it, Hero Honda kick-started its journey to unimaginable success. However, in 2010, the two companies decided to part ways.

While the senior Munjal passed away in 2015, the company continues to stay relevant by constantly reinventing itself. In June 2019, the Punjab government agreed to allot 100 acres to Hero Cycles to set up a modern industrial park to boost manufacturing of cycles, electric bikes and e-vehicles, and promote the light engineering industry in the upcoming Hi-Tech Cycle Valley at Dhanansu in Ludhiana district.

According to a report in Economic Times, this upcoming project will help meet half its demand for cycles from India and Europe.

Iconic brands like Hero, besides invoking nostalgia, have also helped in nation-building. Here’s wishing it many more years of success.

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

Cover Image: Hero Cycles/Facebook

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If things went as I had planned, I would have been dead today,” begins 45-year-old B Murugan.

In 1992, he had just written and failed his class 10 examinations, and had decided to take his life.

Twenty-seven years later, he runs an organisation that takes care of the homeless and provides them with meals every week. He is happily married and has two children.

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Speaking to The Better India, he recollects the day his life turned upside down. “Despite putting in my best efforts, I failed the examinations, and I did not take to it very well. I ran away from home with Rs 300 and decided that wherever the bus would take me, I would end my life there.”

The bus took him to Sirumugai in Coimbatore, about 500 km away from his hometown, Chennai.

And all through the journey, he couldn’t think beyond his failure.

“I felt worthless. At 2 a.m. in Sirumugai, as I sat on the footpath, I met an elderly cobbler who sheltered me for the night. I saw many unfortunate people around me, sleeping on the footpath.”

“I realised that taking my life would be a horrible thing when I could spend it helping others in need.”

That changed Murugan’s life.

“I will never forget that night or that elderly man, who, without saying anything, saved my life,” he adds.

Speaking about the early years, he says, “All the beggars at the Sirumugai bus stop collected money for me to go back to Chennai, but I returned it and decided to stay there and do something useful.”

The first job he managed to find was at a hotel nearby where he waited tables and cleaned. “I got three meals there, so I stayed there and worked. I would wake up at 4 a.m., clean and bathe in the nearby pond, and start work. I did this for six months, after which I got the job of distributing the newspaper every morning. I did whatever odd jobs came my way.”

In 2006, unfortunately, the company that had hired him for these odd jobs, closed down. This prompted him to apply for a driving license.

“The money I made by driving the auto was spent on feeding the homeless,” he says.

On average, he would earn Rs 3,000 a month. He used a part of that money to buy vegetables, rice, and cereal to cook for differently-abled children in a school nearby. While Murugan changed jobs, he never stopped feeding the needy, and their numbers only kept increasing.

Inspired by his work, six other friends joined him, with each contributing Rs 100. In 2008, Murugan started an organisation, called Nizhal Maiyam, meaning ‘Shade to the homeless’.

Slowly, others started pitching in. Today, the organisation provides home-cooked sambar-rice for more than 1,300 people every Sunday.

He elaborates, “From Monday to Friday we all work to make money. We then spend our weekends in cooking and distributing the food to homeless people in about 25 shelter homes. We begin the preparation on Saturday night, while the distribution happens on Sunday. My wife and two children are an equal part of this.”

Do they make enough money? He answers, “We have so many well-wishers helping us. One of my former employers, Shabbir Imani, is a god-sent, who contributes money each month.”

Murugan spends approximately Rs 20,000 a week on the ingredients. What started as one man’s mission, has more than 50 volunteers today.

As we end our conversation, Murugan says, “We all need that one turning point to realise that we are meant for so much more than we believe. We just have to allow ourselves to go with the flow.”

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It is one meal, but for many, it is the only filling meal they get in the entire week. If you wish to reach out to Murugan and help his cause, call him on +91-98650 93251 or contact them Facebook here.

(Edited by Shruti Singhal)

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Manan Agarwal, a resident of Sonepat, Haryana secured the 14th rank in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced 2019. Having obtained 302 marks out of 372, Manan is the state topper as well. A very diligent student, Manan has performed well in academics all through his school scoring 95 per cent in his grade 12 board examination.

In this article, The Better India, spoke to Manan to find out what strategy he adopted while preparing for the JEE, the resource material he used, and tips to follow right before attempting the examination. Manan wrote a novella during his grade 8 about his and his friends’ lives at school and became a published author in grade 9.

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I asked him about the routine he followed during his preparation to which he replied, “My day would begin early, around 6 a.m. and I either went out for a walk or worked out for some time at the gym.”

I would then start studying after breakfast and put about three to four hours of studying, taking an hourly break, he shares.

He would, on an average, study for 12 hours each day.

Manan also enrolled at FIITJEE in West Delhi, which consumed three hours each day thrice a week.

He says, I came for three days for the class and it helped me a great deal. These classes helped in clearing my doubts and attempting mock papers.

For Manan, attempting and clearing competitive examinations, isn’t new. He qualified the National Talent Search Examination (NTSE), stage 1 and 2 and also cleared the prestigious exam for Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana, a scholarship programme funded by the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India.

Not just this, the studious teen also cleared the National Standard Examination in Physics (NSEP), National Standard Examination in Chemistry (NSEC), and National Standard Examination in Astronomy (NSEA), the Olympiads in physics, chemistry, and astronomy respectively.

“I enjoy studying physics and mathematics. In particular I like to understand and learn about electromagnetism and mechanics, which are two topics that I find very interesting.” It was in grade 10 that Manan decided he would attempt the JEE and he says that he started preparing for it around that time.

So dedicated and focussed was Manan on cracking the examination that he stayed away from social media. “I joined Facebook only after I cleared the examinations, until then my only source of entertainment were the breaks that I would take in-between the preparation,” he says.

What resource materials did you use?

Manan extensively used the FIITJEE modules, their home assignments also helped him a great deal. For physics, Manan relied on two resources– one by H C Verma and the other by D C Pandey. For math, he extensively used Vikas Gupta books and J D Lee’s Inorganic Chemistry and Peter Syke’s Mechanism in Organic Chemistry for his chemistry preparation.

For question banks, books by M S Chouhan and V K Jaiswal served the purpose.

Manan mentions here that it is imperative for aspirants to attempt as many mock tests as possible. “It helps understand at what level of preparedness one is. In fact for the last two months I would attempt almost two mock tests a day,” he says.

I ask him what an aspirant must focus on a week prior to the examination, and he replies that mock tests, and concentrating on topics where they feel they are least prepared.

“Revising them will help when they are finally attempting the paper,” he shares.

In conclusion, he leaves students preparing for IIT-JEE exams with these tips to remember while at the examination centre:

1. There are two parts to this examination and Manan says that after attempting part 1, one should refrain from looking at the question paper and discussing it with others during the break. Use this time to stay focussed and prepare for the part 2 of the examination.

2. Use the break to just relax and eat something substantial since you will have another few hours of writing and thinking to do.

3. Be prepared as the second test might be more tiring than the first part.

Manan will be joining the prestigious IIT-Bombay where he will be studying Computer Science.

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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How many times have you felt vulnerable while walking down the street, not just at night but also in broad daylight? This has happened to me so many times that I have lost count. Sometimes, I wish I were brave enough to turn around and ask the letching men to back off, but have been unable to gather the courage to do so.

When Sreeja, an Assistant Director in films, found herself in a similar situation, she decided to stand up for herself and take matters into her own able hands.

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Like most days Sreeja was returning from work and was at the Perungudi railway station in Chennai when she realised that a man was stalking her. She was worried, but instead of letting it get to her, she proceeded calmly with her weapon of choice—a ballpoint pen—and made a quiet exit.

So what did Sreeja do exactly with the ballpoint pen? Well, she took off the cap of the pen and aimed for the aggressor’s eye.

This video might give you a sense of the various techniques that one could adopt to keep aggressors at bay.

Sreeja believes that this was only possible as she has received training in an Israeli self-defence technique called Krav Maga from her father, S SreeRam. Originally developed in the late 1930s by Hungarian-born Israeli martial artist, Emrich “Imi” Lichtenfeld, it was used by the Israeli army before being redeveloped for civilian use in the 1960s.

59-year-old SreeRam started learning this form of self-defence when he was 45, and three years later he started his own Krav Maga academy in Chennai, in which he has directly or indirectly impacted the lives of almost 30,000 women.

In this fascinating conversation with The Better India, he speaks about why he chose this martial art, how he works, and ways in which women can protect themselves from aggressors and attackers.

“For over two decades, I was an advertising and branding person. I worked as an art director and then moved to the corporate sector, where I was heading the marketing communication for an anti-virus software company,” he begins.

I ask why he chose to make the shift from a comfortable corporate role to teaching Krav Maga, and he replies, “I was a black belt in karate when I was in college, so the interest was always there, but life in the corporate world did not allow me any time to pursue this interest.”

At the age of 45, SreeRam felt that everything around him was going downhill.

“I would keep reading about cases of women getting abused and raped day-in-day-out. While I was making money and leading a comfortable life, I felt that I needed to break free of that routine and needed to vent and find an avenue to do that.”

It was during this phase in his life that he came across Krav Maga, which was a different sort of martial art he says. “Instead of spending money on going to a gym and running on the treadmill, I decided to learn it.”

SreeRam was the oldest student in the class, and admits that his fitness levels weren’t up to the mark.

“Until then, I was smoking and drinking heavily, so even to manage the class well was an effort in the beginning. It took almost six months of training to regain a working level of fitness,” he says to me.

When he started learning, it wasn’t to train others. “I just wanted relief from my mundane job, and I didn’t have a clue that life would take such a turn,” he mentions.

Every six months, SreeRam would visit Delhi, where Israelis would come to conduct the instructor course.

“It usually is a one-week-long packed course where one is kept busy from morning until night. Even that was something that I looked at as a break from my routine. I had completed three levels so when I was approached to teach in Chennai, I agreed,” he says.

SreeRam started by teaching on Sundays—he used to hire a hall in a nearby school and slowly he found students.

“I decided to consult on various projects and teach Krav Maga on weekends. I even went to Israel to get an independent instructor certificate.”

I ask him how much this would cost someone, and SreeRam says that other than the travel expenses to Israel, the course and certification costs about 1500 Euros (Rs 1 lakh).

In Chennai, the classes cost Rs 4,500 for working professionals for three months.

“We wanted to make this affordable and even teach approximately 20 per cent of the students for free. We have an incubation plan for boys from lower-income backgrounds wherein once they learn they go to schools and conduct classes and also earn some money out of this. We have about seven such boys,” he says.

A typical day in SreeRam’s life is as follows

“I start my class at 6:30 am, and that goes on for an hour. The rest of the morning is spent in fine-tuning various pitches and paperwork. Afternoons and evening are spent in schools and colleges where we conduct classes and workshops. Usually, from 3-5 pm, we are at schools in various parts of the city. I also teach the Tamil Nadu police, where I am a regular trainer at the Commando school.”

With an average of 100 students each month over the last ten years, SreeRam has impacted and changed the lives of many people in Chennai. He goes to talk about why it was so important for him to train women.

“I was watching the news one day about a girl being molested by a man because she had argued with him earlier. That stayed with me, and when the opportunity came up, I spoke to the Chennai police commissioner about training women. We started by training two women officers from every station and over three months, trained 70 women officers, and thus began our journey with training women.”

Has the experience of training women been any different from training men?

“While there are apparent differences in their physiologies, Krav Maga is not based on physical strength. When we teach women, we focus on techniques they can use to defend themselves and leave the scene. Even though women realise that it is a critical skill, they are slightly cynical about it,” he explains. While this is true, many students often call SreeRam to thank him for training them, telling him about how they used the techniques to defend themselves from aggressors.

In Krav Maga, SreeRam says that the emphasis is on using available objects to defend oneself. Remember to use your voice, your fingernails, your high-heeled shoes, even a pen as weapons if the need arises. For example one can use bags, chair to shield themselves, pens, forks, scissors can be used in place of knives, and alcohol, perfume and deodorant can be used to temporarily blind the aggressor.

To understand what women who train with SreeRam feel about the art form, I spoke to 29-year-old Sudha Rajagopal, who has been training for three years now.

“The fact that this was a technique that would help me defend myself is what attracted me to it in the beginning.”As a woman, there were several instances where I have been eve-teased and made fun of, while earlier I never dared to do anything about it, learning Krav Maga has instilled tremendous confidence in me.”

She adds, “What’s also amazing about it is that anyone can learn it, without the need to have any prior training or fitness levels.”

So does learning this martial art form make you a superwoman?

“Absolutely not. What it does is give you the ability to defend yourself. You tend to feel helpless in situations where you face an aggressor, and this art form equips you with the ability to fight back.”

This technique can be taught to anyone aged 10 and up.

“Anyone younger than that is not in a position to comprehend the potential harm that it may cause. Even if kids come to class, we only teach them techniques to improve balance and stamina. The intent is to tire them out. However, anyone above 10 learns the proper techniques,” says SreeRam.

SreeRam’s important tips for women:

1. Be aware

One of the essential aspects is situational awareness. Everyone is usually glued to their mobile phones while walking, and one must remember that no crime happens just like that. An aggressor or a thief studies the situation well before an attack takes place, and therefore, one must be aware at all times.

2. Always keep your antennae up

Taking off from the previous point, SreeRam says that whenever you are in a public place watch out for out of the ordinary things. You might notice being followed, or someone clicking pictures without your knowledge. If your guard is up, you will see these things and can take immediate action to stop it. Crime never happens suddenly, so always be prepared.

3. Don’t reveal your emotional vulnerability

Whether online or offline, SreeRam urges women and girls to not reveal their emotional vulnerabilities. You will find people taking notice and showing concern immediately and while sometimes this concern may be well-intended, many times it is not and can cause grave issues. So refrain from doing so. Don’t assume that everyone around you is good. People who wish to win you over will always put their best foot forward, so take your time before you completely trust someone.

After this in-depth conversation with SreeRam, I have made up my mind to find a centre near my home so that I can also learn this self-defence system.

It’s important to always feel in control, and Krav Maga is one step in that direction. If this has inspired you to learn this martial art form or reach out to SreeRam to get more information, you can e-mail him at kravmaga.chennai@gmail.com or check their Facebook page here.

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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There is no stopping the ‘Dhing Express’.

On Saturday, Hima Das picked up her fifth gold medal at the Nove Mesto nad Metuji Grand Prix, Czech Republic. She won the 400m race with a season-best timing of 52.09 seconds.

Social media and news publications have heaped praise on India’s most famous track and field athlete, with phrases like ‘Gold Rush’ and ‘Golden Girl’.

Finished 400m today on the top here in Czech Republic today pic.twitter.com/1gwnXw5hN4

— Hima MON JAI (@HimaDas8) July 20, 2019

Not since PT Usha has India celebrated success in track and field to this extent.

From the rice fields near Assam’s Dhing town to the world stage in a little less than three years, Hima Das represents the best of India.

She became the first Indian sprinter to win a gold medal at an international track event in the World U-20 Championships 2018 in Tampere, Finland. She won the 400 m silver at the 2018 Asian Games. She donated half her month’s salary towards flood relief efforts in Assam.

She represents the aspirations of millions of young girls and women, particularly from small towns and villages, who now believe even more firmly that they can reach for the stars.

Amidst all of this, she even remembers to represent both her country and her state – always wrapping both the Indian flag and the traditional Assamese Gamusa around herself when she wins.

And all of this, when she is just 19!.

And while Hima has given us a lot of pride and joy, as fans we also have a responsibility towards her.

Indian sports fans aren’t exactly known for their patience or perspective. Somehow, many fans seem to find it easy to ride along when the wins come but turn vicious when the sportsperson fails.

A lot of it, I believe, is down to the inability of the average fan to manage expectations.

India was expected to win the 2019 Cricket World Cup, and not go down fighting to New Zealand in the semi-finals. And therefore millions derided MS Dhoni for his occasional failure during the event, a man who has probably given more to Indian cricket than anyone in the past decade.

It would be a tragedy, and an insult, if we were to treat Hima the same way in the near future since our expectations from her are sky-high.

Hima has set the bar high for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.

So to the undiscerning fan, the expectation is that she will win a medal in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in either the 100m, 200m or 400m.

However, one look at her best ever timings in recent similar events (11.78, 23.10 and 50.79 seconds), and it’s evident that these times would not have been good enough to even qualify for the respective final events in the 2016 Rio Olympics.

None of the 20 athletes she has faced since 2 July 2019 has a higher personal best than her. Several athletes are specialists in other events like the indoor 60m or 100m hurdles. The ones she will face in the Olympics will be of a wholly different calibre.

Does it mean that she won’t win a medal in 2020?

Of course not. She could, and we all wish that she does.

But as fans, we must not get carried away by Hima’s recent success and then come crashing down on her if she fails as all athletes do at some point in their careers.

Also Read: Homemakers, Working Moms, Students: These Gritty Women Won India’s 1st Rugby Medal

By the time the Tokyo Olympics come around, she will only be 20 years old. With time, she will only get better. She needs facilities, plenty of training and a stunning regime to reach that level, and let us hope that we as a nation can ensure that she gets it, without having to make any more personal sacrifices.

However, while we should continue to support, cherish and even on occasion criticize her, but let us not expect miracles in the Olympics and then shame her for not making them.

Let us wait till Hima surprises us all once again. She represents the best of us. As responsible fans, let’s do our best to support her.

(Edited by Vinayak Hegde)

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In April 2016, at the peak of his career in the Silicon Valley, San Francisco-based Vivek Shah decided to quit his job and return to India with his wife Brinda who holds a Masters in Printmaking.

Why?

To build a natural farm.

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“Living in San Francisco made us a lot more aware of our surroundings. Being full-time professionals ourselves, we started realising how our lifestyle was fluctuating toward becoming unhealthy due to our schedules,” says Vivek.

The couple’s first step to take charge of their health was to start learning to cook together.

“And yet, one of our biggest struggles was, we didn’t know where the food we were eating every single day was coming from,” shares Vivek.

The area the couple resided in was full of tall fruit-bearing trees. It reminded Vivek of his childhood when life was simpler. Climbing trees barefoot, scraping your knees and hands, and the joy of plucking fruit off and then devouring them.

He wanted to make that joy a part of his life again and growing their own food was how they thought they could savour it again. The couple set out on a journey to learn the principles of permaculture in a state not far away from California. It was this trip that strengthened their resolve to return to India and set up their farm.

“When we were travelling for the course, we came across a strawberry field. Just as we were enjoying the view, we saw a person dressed in a white protective jumpsuit spraying some liquid on to the crops. It sent a chill down our spines. Imagine if the workers had to wear a protective layer to prevent the side-effects of their spraying chemicals, we were consuming the food that was being grown like that. It not only affected the consumers, the growers but also the environment at large. This was our turning point.”

And so, in 2016, the duo quit their jobs and returned to their home state, Gujarat.

Interestingly, there was no opposition. Their families were supportive of their choice and beyond elated that the couple had decided to come home.

“We had no background in agriculture. But the course we did helped us immensely in understanding the various techniques we could adopt to build a natural and sustainable farm. We decided to kickstart our journey by growing what we liked to eat first. Being Gujjus, it had to be mangoes,” he laughs.

In 2017, an hour and a half drive away from Ahmedabad, they bought a 10-acre land located on the outskirts of Nadiad, Central Gujarat, to create a farm which would not only fulfill the needs of their kitchen and make them independent of the market but also take up commercial operations.

And that’s how Brindavan came about. From ensuring soil fertility with techniques such as green manuring and controlled grazing to harvesting rainwater through pits and trenches, the duo practice techniques that help them utilise the farm resources to their maximum capacity.

The plot is divided into seven different subplots all of which receive different organic treatments to revive and promote the growth of crops.

From pearl millet (bajra), wheat, potatoes, moringa, bananas, papaya, jamun to timber, the couple grows crops that range from commercial to semi-commercial.

A mix of commercial and experimental farming, some of their other techniques which include plug nurseries, no-till vegetable farming, planting windbreaks, bird-loving plants, butterfly and bee loving plants, are directed toward pest and soil management in some way or the other.

They have dug trenches and pits on 10 per cent of the overall land to capture every drop of rainwater that falls on the 10-acre farm. This ensures that every good monsoon cycle helps harvest five to ten lakh litres of water.

The duo has also built a natural home with soil, cow dung and stone. The soil to build the earth walls of this home was also sourced from the farm itself when they dug a pond. One of the reasons to dig this pond was also to tackle the issue of effluent water that a local contractor was letting into the field.

“We were shocked because we had been trying out best to not let any form of chemical enter our farm. We decided to tackle this by collecting this water in a pond. We lined the pond with water-purifying varieties of plants that could remove the impurities before it made it to the pond, which captures 1.5 to 2 lakh litres of water.”

Aiming to turn this pond into a wildlife pond, Brinda and Vivek are soon going to introduce fish and ducks in it. Vivek is also working on building a bigger water-treatment plant that could eventually expand into a secondary business.

Instead of using pesticides or concoctions to keep pests at bay, the couple uses integral natural pest management techniques on the farm like growing aromatic plants such as tulsi, lemongrass, etc. on the outer boundaries of the field. These help create a protective guard and keep fruit flies and pests at bay. Another method to ensure that pest attacks do not cause complete loss, is intercropping or multi-cropping which is the process of growing two or more crops on the same piece of land. To ensure that not a single leaf on the farm is burned, all the farm waste is processed to make compost.

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Since the seven subplots grow different varieties, in the advent of any pest attack on any one crop, the couple can recover because of a diverse ecosystem they have created on their farm.

An example of this is, on the plot that they practice agro-forestry, the main fruit orchard not only grows fruits such as mangoes, guavas, papayas but also other trees such as sandalwood, cassava, and moringa. They also grow several grains and vegetables on the same land such as turmeric, fenugreek, wheat, lemon etc.

Every pest attack is a learning process. We do not believe in killing them. There have been times where termites have taken down many of our mango trees. But they are a part of our system and we appreciate their presence a lot more. They work with us, so we try to accommodate them too. This being said, it is important to say that farming is not the only source of our survival. So while we can afford to lose a few trees or plants to pests, an average farmer who farms for a living might not, says Vivek.

How else do they earn their living?

The couple conducts workshops and does consultation work on kitchen gardening, natural landscaping for organic farms/agroforestry, composting, integrating fruit-bearing, native and drought resilient plants, etc.

They have about three farmhands to maintain the daily work at the farm. The ecosystem that they have created on the farm has attracted several bees, birds, and insects. The farm today boasts of seven beehives!

In a final message to those wanting to make the switch to organic farming, Vivek says, “Growing our food and creating our forests is the need of the hour. Global warming and climate change are not waiting for anyone. So don’t let any second thoughts let you step back. Go ahead and pursue natural farming and work for the environment.”

If this story inspired you, get in touch with Vivek and Brinda on their Facebook page here.

Check out some amazing pictures from the farm

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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Born into abject poverty, 36-year-old social activist Sunita Bhosale has seen the worst of humanity.

Members of the persecuted Phanse Pardhi tribal community in Amble village, Pune district, Sunita’s father Eknath would hunt small birds and animals, while her mother Shantabai often begged for food. (The two were married when Shantabai was just 10.)

Living in a tin sheet hut on the outskirts of the village, Sunita was only three when her father broke her mother’s hand.

Lack of access to medical assistance caused the hand to remain paralysed to this day.

Months after the incident, Eknath’s body was found on some railway tracks in Ahmednagar district.

The family felt he was murdered. But the police deemed it accidental and refused to investigate further. Sunita believes this too was just another form of prejudice the Pardhi community suffers.

Institutional discrimination

The British branded the Pardhi community as criminals under its 1871 Criminal Tribes Act, which gave the Raj ” . . . the power to brand, penalise, segregate and forcibly sedentarise hitherto nomadic communities”.

Independent India repealed the Act in 1952, but almost all of the 120 communities so identified then, including the Pardhis, suffer from the stigma till this day. Among the Pardhis, there are various sub-groups – Phanse Pardhis, Bil Pardhis and Pal Pardhis – who were originally named based on their occupation and other descriptors. Many villages still don’t even let them enter.

“These tribes were considered criminal by birth and any theft in their locality was ascribed to them. They were kept out of economic activities and pushed deeper into poverty. Till date, they are viewed with suspicion and are not part of mainstream society. To make things worse, many of these tribes are nomadic, with no fixed roots. They have found it difficult to settle down and make ends meet,” informs Uma Sriram, a Bombay High Court advocate working closely with the community and Sunita, while speaking to The Better India (TBI).

“I still remember a time when someone in our community bought new clothes they wouldn’t wash them for a long time. If they washed them, there was a real fear that the police would come to their doorstep and accuse them of stealing these clothes. The women also don’t own a lot of jewellery (often a source of financial security) fearing confiscation by the police even if they have the receipts to prove otherwise,” says Sunita, speaking to TBI.

If a crime happens somewhere and locals begin protesting, the police often placate the mob claiming that they would catch the culprits in a few days. Instead of finding the real suspect, they will lock up people from the Pardhi community and say ‘we have caught the criminal’. God knows, I have dealt with thousands of such false cases filed against members of our community, she adds.

My question to the larger society is that if we are hereditary thieves, why have we not progressed in life? If we have stolen things worth Rs 2-4 lakh, as some claim, why do most of us not have a house, cars or even new clothes! she adds.

Seeing the worst of humanity

“My father passed away. My mother had a broken arm and disabled. My elder sister Anita and brother Avinash would go to school, but I couldn’t because there was a lot of work at home and much of the responsibility fell on me,” says Sunita.

Those ‘responsibilities’ required her to drop out of school from Class V and beg for food two or three times a day.

“Sunita started working with the ‘Manavi Hakk Abhiyan’, a non-profit, at the tender age of 11 under the guidance of the late Eknath Awad, a prominent Dalit activist. There, she received intensive legal training and knowledge about human rights concerns.

“It was Awad who suggested that she start the ‘Adivasi Pardhi Samaj Sanghatana’, a social organisation working for, by and from the Pardhi community across Maharashtra in 2005,” says Uma.

The Home Front

For Sunita, ‘work’ began right at home itself.

Thanks to a lack of access to healthcare, education and the law and order machinery, social evils like child marriage, untouchability, dowry, a kangaroo court system and beggary were prevalent among the Pardhis.

And It was the women who bore the brunt of it.

“The community here believes that married girls must bear children soon after their first menstrual cycle. If a teenage girl does not have a child, they are called names or cast away. Making matters worse, they receive no maternal care whatsoever during their pregnancy. To get a girl married, the family has to pay dowry which usually runs into lakhs of rupees. Born as the second girl child in the family, for an hour after birth, my parents didn’t pick me up. When I began getting my periods, I wasn’t allowed into the house, a prejudice all Pardhi women suffer,” says Sunita.

For women, their ordeal only gets worse after marriage. Growing up, she saw the horrific treatment that was met out to them as a matter of practice.

“For example, if I were married, no one will touch my clothes. There will be a stone, or a rock kept separately for me and not even a proper bathroom for me to bathe. I’ll be given a different soap, bucket, and my clothes are kept separately. After washing clothes or bathing, someone from the family has to pour over my hand before I can re-enter the home. I have to fetch my food, whether I beg or work for it. Even if I buy a saree worth Rs 10,000, I won’t be allowed to take it inside the house. If I have prepared food, none of my in-laws can eat it. Only my husband is allowed to eat food cooked by my hands,” she adds.

With most husbands either thrown into prison under false cases or succumbing to alcoholism, the women often resort to begging as a means of survival.

Although the practice of untouchability has reduced a little now, when Sunita started her work on the ground as an activist, it was very prevalent.

“No one would eat food or drink water if it touched my hands except for my husband. The floor mat for me to sit on would be separate,” she informs.

Unwilling to sideline her humanity, she has refused to get married thus far.

“I will only get married if my husband is willing to subscribe to my ideals,” she says.

On top of all that, there are patriarchal institutions like the ‘Jaat Panchayat’ (caste-specific juries of elders in the village which adjudicate on local disputes), dominated by men.

Here, women have no voice, and if found guilty by this kangaroo court, are subject to massive fines amounting to lakhs. If they resist the order, they suffer abuse and are often stripped naked.

This is the scope of the challenge Sunitha faced on the home front.

Fighting the good fight

Helping start the ‘Adivasi Pardhi Samaj Sanghatana’ in 2005, and founding the Kranti Trust in 2011, a non-profit organisation, Sunita’s work encompasses over 220 villages across different talukas of Pune and Ahmednagar districts.

With assistance from over 500 volunteers from the Pardhi community, she handles three-four cases a week, ranging from trumped-up charges of robbery and murder, domestic violence and rape.

Meeting with the aggrieved person, she counsels them, helps them file a police complaint, arranges for a lawyer, pays the legal fees and doggedly follows up these cases.

“Recently, the local police had taken a Yunus Bhosale, who worked at a local medical facility, into custody on charges of robbery. During interrogation, he suffered intense physical torture. I spoke to the local Superintendent of Police and his deputy, got the case investigated, and he was finally released under Section 169 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), stating the ‘release of [the] accused when evidence [is] deficient’.

He was arrested because where the robbery had happened, there was a slipper lying around the crime scene which by chance had fitted him,” recalls Sunita.

Besides, she conducts fact-finding missions on atrocity and torture cases suffered by the members of the community at the hands of the police and the capture of grazing land and disputes surrounding them. She also spreads awareness about violence against women, child marriage, dowry, caste discrimination and untouchability.

In two decades of grassroots activism, she has stopped more than 90 child marriages, provided legal support to more than 220 victims of atrocity cases, handled over 500 police torture cases, and supported women in over 150 cases of domestic violence.

She has even started two anganwadis (which are often not functional due to lack of finance), besides supporting a hundred students from the community to finish their school education.

Naturally, her work has faced serious resistance from both within and outside the community.

“She continuously receives death threats and threats of arrest. Despite these threats, she continues her day-to-day work, hoping that the government of the day will take real and effective steps to protect indigenous people,” says Uma.

In the early days of her activism, she was met with scorn by the elders in the community. They derided her for what they considered ‘rubbish work’, asking people not to listen to her.

“As a follower of Babasaheb Ambedkar, Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule since the age of 11, I have always followed their ideals.

“Many in community taunted me for following Ambedkar because he was a Dalit, saying ‘why should we strive for his ideology’. Many households didn’t even let me into their homes. But this is slowly changing,” she says.

However, it was the Jaat Panchayat that really took issue with her activism, particularly her attempts at raising the stature of women, offering access to the legal system and preventing child marriages. So much so that they hired goons to beat her up.

“Fortunately, there were people from my family and other activists who protected me,” she says.

Thanks to the network she built with the local police, volunteers and tireless activists, she receives prior notice about potential child marriages.

“We ensure that young girls are not married off, children don’t drop out of school and those who do and have only completed school till Class IX, we have also gotten them admitted again. I also offer to bear the expenses of children’s education to stop their parents from getting them married, and then we take responsibility for the child,” she says.

Moreover, under the Kranti Trust, Sunita also runs the Uma Sriram Scholarship, which educates 200 children from the Phanse Pardhi and Bhil Pardhi communities. These children are school dropouts, who have resorted to begging.

The scholarship seeks to get them off the streets and back to their respective village schools.

This scholarship covers their school education. Five college-going students, meanwhile, are also being trained for the police recruitment exam.

Meanwhile, she is also trying to ensure everyone in her community gets a caste certificate, which will enable better access to government schemes. Thanks to her work, nearly 1000 families got their homes under a government scheme.

Also Read: Accidental Environmentalist: Ladakhi Farmer Escaped Poverty by Planting 4000 Trees!

Sunita’s work has received a lot of recognition from various organisations in the state, who have awarded her with a slew of fellowships and awards.

She uses that money to help meet the medical expenses of her community members, while also assisting schoolchildren.

Funding for her organisation comes from individual donations.

In addition, Sunita now owns nine acres of land on which she grows 15-20 quintals of jowar, bajra and harbara. Since she can’t pay her volunteers, she gives them a portion of her crop.

Most of her volunteers are either unemployed, farm labourers or young students.

It has been a long life of struggle. But today, Sunita lives in a two-room concrete home in Ambale with her mother. While her sister is married, her brother found work as a gardener with the National Defence Academy in Pune.

Throughout, she has carried on her struggle tirelessly for the protection of poor and vulnerable people, advocating for their rights and trying to help them emerge from a state of precariousness and uncertainty.

And if anything sums up the vast difference her work has made, both across society and in her world, sample this anecdote she shared. “One time, I knew the hitman they (Jaat Panchayat members) had sent to beat me. He didn’t do anything to me because I had helped his sister file a domestic violence case against her violent husband. So, he took the contract to attack me, but upon learning who I was, backed off, saying I did good work,” she recalls.

When even your enemies acknowledge your ‘good work’, it is truly an inspiring life.

Photo Courtesy: Uma Sriram

(Edited by Vinayak Hegde)

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At the age of 16, I was devising ways to go and watch Kaho Na Pyaar Hai, the highest grosser of the year 2000. Though my teenage heart belonged to Shahrukh Khan, my school friends and I particularly wanted to watch this new kid on the block.

This is pretty much what teenagers do; plan what movie to see, which stream to pursue, discuss which teacher teaches the best, and what profession to take up in the future.

Sadly, there are girls at the other end of the spectrum, who are forced to abandon their education by either family or circumstances, married off at an age when they do not even understand what marriage means, and carry the burden of household chores when all they should be worrying about is the next exam.

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Khushboo Goel, too, had to go through the same ordeal when, at 16, she was forced to marry without her consent. A teenager being married off does not make headlines anymore, and as a society we have become blasé to this cruel reality.

So why am I writing about her?

Khushboo is a 23-year-old young woman whose life is a testimony to the fact that there are unsung heroes living in our midst, who take challenges head-on and make something of their lives.

“As a child, I saw more violence than love. I saw my father get drunk and beat my mother ruthlessly. I grew up believing that being aggressive and violent were normal characteristics,” informs Khushboo in a conversation with The Better India (TBI).

Having a person tell her struggles to your face makes you wonder how they faced it all and still found the strength to move on. For Khushboo, the answer lay in her resilience and indomitable spirit.

Khushboo’s formative years.

Born into a family that had no financial stability, Khushboo grew up seeing her parents bicker, fight and often resort to violence which spilled onto the children.

“I would get beaten every other day, going to school with belt marks on my skin was getting so embarrassing for me as a child. There were many days when I felt helpless and even thought of killing myself,” she says.

Khushboo shares how her parents never lent any support or encouragement to her to follow her dreams, instead her mother was insistent on getting her married as soon as possible.

When Khushboo was in grade 10, her mother decided to get her married to her sister’s youngest son. Recalling that time, she says,

I was 16 at that time and my husband-to-be was 26 years old.

Though her fiance supported her right to pursue an education, it all came to naught later on. “Initially he supported me in everything and even wanted me to study – I realised much later that all he wanted was my body,” tells Khushboo.

Marriage

On 6 May 2012, Khushboo was married. “On the assurance that I would be allowed to continue my education, I moved to Mysore, where my husband and his family stayed. While everything was alright initially, it soon started to become unbearable for me to stay there. I was beaten by my husband for no reason at all, my in-laws would not give me food, would put restrictions on my going to study – it was a living hell.”

She says her life was reduced to ensuring everyone’s happiness.

Within eight months of being married, Khushboo was pregnant. “It was only when I went to the doctor for a vaccination that I realised I was pregnant. I wasn’t ready for it but I was not allowed to abort. I reconciled myself thinking that a child would perhaps change things for me,” she says. All this when she was just 17.

In August 2013, Khushboo delivered her son whom she named Azaan. “It was his birth that perhaps changed me, now I had to be responsible for him and ensure that I do everything to provide for him.”

Life after the birth of her son

Life took an unexpected turn after Khushboo had given birth to her son. “After Azaan was born, I started staying with my mother in Mumbai, and much later, I was informed of my husband getting remarried. He did not even have the courtesy to tell me.”

With great difficulty, the young mother managed to complete her grade 12. She also took up odd jobs to support herself and her son. She goes on to say,

“It was on the insistence of a few friends that I took up a graphic designing course and that was what perhaps helped me – I got a job because of the skills I had learnt and thus started my life again.”

Khushboo is now pursuing her MSW and is based in Mumbai where she has been working with an NGO for more than three years. Azaan is now six, and while her struggles continue, she is in a much better mental space.

She talks about how life is now, living with her mother. “It is my mother who is now Azaan’s primary caregiver. That is the only way in which I can go out and work. Have I forgiven her? Maybe not, but I am indebted to her for what she is doing now. My son, Azaan, loves her and so does she. There is nothing that she does not do for him.”

Khushboo ends the conversation with the mantra with which she lives her life.

“It is your life, take charge of it, and you will realise that nothing is impossible if you set your mind to it. If I have been able to do it, so can you. No matter how bad the past is you can always begin again,” Simple enough to read, but powerful, if followed.

Also Read: Beacon of ‘Good Work’: Even A Hired Goon Refused to Beat This Crusader For Justice!

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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Not so long ago, you could see the golden sunrise from a blanket of green, amid a host of birds announcing the arrival of dawn.

Today, this is a thing of the past because the morning performance of colours is hidden behind the monstrous structures of grey concrete. And, the sweet chirping is muffled by the cacophony of traffic.

Living a sustainable lifestyle is not a challenge anymore. And, that starts with what you eat. Check out such sustainable options that will help you not just eat healthy but also organic, here.

“It is like living in a noisy jungle, but which is made of nothing but pollution and concrete,” gasps V Uma Shankar Guru, a 40-year-old who has spent all this life in Bengaluru, witnessing its transition from a Garden city to India’s Silicon Valley.

His frustration with the current state soon pushed him into embracing a simple and more grounded lifestyle. From a farm to a farmhouse, he is now building his dream home with zero use of concrete or any artificial construction material, all by himself with a budget of under Rs 10 lakhs!

“The joy of building your own dream home from scratch cannot be explained in words. It is both fulfilling and empowering to see it all fall into place with your own hands. This feeling can never be measured in money,” says the man.

The secret he says lies in the choice to have luxury without excess.

But how?

“We forget that luxury is not always hidden in the excessively expensive and materialistic objects that we can buy. It can also be an experience, rare and precious enough to give you a sense of satisfaction. For our home, we have used that principle, whereby we prioritize the objects necessary for our comfort and install only those. It is the setting and surroundings that will make the stay luxurious,” he shares.

And the fact, that the structure is entirely created out of mud and wood, gives it a rustic feel, he adds.

A Do-It-Yourself Dream Home

What seems to be an achievable reality now, was once an impossible feat for the IT professional who had zero experience in construction and architecture.

It was only after a 2-day workshop in 2017 conducted by architect Biju Bhaskar in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, that Uma Shankar gained the confidence to build his own house.

“One of the first and most important aspects of the training was to look back at our old traditional building techniques that were in harmony with nature. Our ancestors built beautiful structures without any artificial construction material at all, and the sessions opened us to the possibility of adopting their ways to create spaces for urban living. Only after this I began to plan for the house and started work in January 2018,” he says.

Uma Shankar’s journey to reconnect with his roots, however, began in 2014, when he purchased a 2-acre plot of land for farming.

“Farming is something I always wanted to do, and when I finally started it in 2015, this allowed me to take my first step to live sustainably. It’s a really special feeling to grow food and consume it too!” he explains. Today, he cultivates vegetables and flowers on the plot of land, out of which around 2000 sq ft has been allocated for the house.

Returning to the building process, he adds that his DIY house is being built by him and a team of labourers, on a surface area of 1600 sq ft, using sand, rice straw, mud, wood, limestone and jaggery.

The entire structure does not use the conventional construction materials like cement, bricks or steel and still manages to be equally sturdy, sustainable and affordable.

“On the foundation of stone, the entire house is made of cob or mud. Cob is a mixture of mud, rice, straw and husk, sand, limestone and jaggery, and has been used to build the house instead of bricks or cement. The jaggery acts like a natural binder that makes sure the cob holds strong. Then we make balls out of it and assemble them like bricks to create the wall. To ensure sturdiness, the thickness of the wall is also increased from a few inches to 1.5 feet. Even for the plaster, we are using mud and lime plasters instead of cement. The Rajasthani plaster technique is also employed for the walls in the bathroom that need to be waterproof,” explains Uma Shankar.

For the roof which is made of Mangalore or Clay tiles, he has used a fabrication of coconut wood, thus replacing the need for steel. The flooring is also done using clay, with earthen floors in bedrooms and the living room and terracotta tiles in the bathroom.

“Throughout the planning and execution process, the principle was to create a low-cost sustainable home. While the extensive use of mud does bring the overall cost down, the choice to not invest too much on furniture is another aspect that has helped in achieving the goal. Even for the doors and windows, we have used normal mango or jungle wood instead of teak, that provide strength without the extra expense,” he says.

Explaining the design choices, he adds that in this 2-bedroom duplex, he is using cob instead of wooden furniture. For example, in place of a wooden bed, he has planned to raise the floor level to create a permanent cob bed.

The same is being done for other seating arrangements in the living room. The rest of the amenities, like the kitchen chimney, wardrobe, etc. are all made using bamboo and finished with a coat of cob mixture.

Despite being old, these traditional methods do not compromise on durability; instead, they enhance it.

“Not only is it all low-cost but also sustainable in the long run. For instead, the cob wall and natural roofing act as a natural thermos, which keeps warm when the outside temperature is low and keeps cool when the outside temperature is hot. During summers you will find a 4-5 % difference in temperature, thus eliminating the need for appliances like air conditioners,” he adds.

While work worth two more months is still left, Uma Shankar’s promising feat is a constant reminder that anybody indeed can make a substantial difference to their lives and in turn the environment, with a little bit of planning and loads of initiative!

Also Read: This Family Home is Not Only Green-Powered, But Also Gives Energy Back to The Grid

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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Sitting in an air-conditioned room, sipping chai, signing documents, meeting numerous people every day to learn about the issues they are facing, and giving them assurances about better days in the future.

For most of us, this pretty much sums up a day in the life of a typical Indian government official, isn’t it?

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But what if I tell you that a District Collector is dirtying his hands to ensure that the region under his jurisdiction remains clean?

On 21 July (Sunday), District Collector Vijay Kulange joined ‘Team Clean City,’ (TCC) a citizen-led organisation in Berhampur, Odisha, and dedicated a couple of hours to remove illegal posters from the PVN Rao petrol pump.

Once that was done, the rest of the group carried on and continued the good work in parks, movie halls and other public places.

TCC was formed a month ago under the leadership of Saktidhar Rajguru, a journalist by profession. The movement to remove illegal posters from public areas was kicked off from MKCG Medical College square.

“After a few morning walkers and I removed illegal posters from walls, we shared our efforts on Facebook, and the movement picked up. Within 25 days around 100 people joined us, and soon the work spread across the city. Upon reading about us online, Collector Kulange contacted us to appreciate the efforts. Little did we know he would actually turn up. It was very encouraging for the team,” Rajguru tells The Better India.

Kulange, a 2013 batch IAS officer was posted in the district last year, and since then, the government official has been taking steps to make both citizens and district officials more accountable, keeping the district clean being his priority.

Speaking to The Better India, the District Collector says, “Keeping public areas clean is as much a responsibility of citizens as it is of the government. The group’s mindset to take up the ownership of their city and bring a change without the government’s intervention is very impressive. Their efforts are laudable, and everyone should follow this practice.”

Besides helping the people and setting an example, Kulange also issued a warning across the city against the activity of sticking posters. The district administration will soon start imposing fines in case of violations.

Kulange’s day out with the citizens resulted in more people joining the movement. “The participation of people is increasing by the day,” says Rajguru.

A week after the above incident, Kulange surprised paddy cultivation farmers in the Bharasa village.

He interacted with them about the issues, financial problems and techniques they are using to cultivate rice. Soon after, he decided to join in and plant paddy saplings.

Images of the District Collector removing posters and paddy cultivation have created a wave on social media, and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik took to Twitter to appreciate his actions.

ଗଞ୍ଜାମ ଜିଲ୍ଲାପାଳ ବିଜୟ ଅମୃତା କୁଲାଙ୍ଗେ ଖଲ୍ଲିକୋଟ ବ୍ଲକ୍‌ ଭରସା ଗାଁରେ ଚାଷୀଙ୍କ ସହ ମିଶି ଧାନ ରୋଇବା ଏବଂ ଧାଡିରୁଆର ଉପାଦେୟତା ସମ୍ପର୍କରେ ଚାଷୀଙ୍କୁ ବୁଝାଇବା ଉତ୍ସର୍ଗୀକୃତ ସେବାର ପରିଚୟ। ଲୋକଙ୍କ ନିକଟତର ହୋଇ ସେମାନଙ୍କ ସୁବିଧା ପାଇଁ ସମର୍ପଣ ଭାବ ନେଇ କାମ କରୁଥିବାରୁ ଜିଲ୍ଲାପାଳଙ୍କୁ ମୋର ସାଧୁବାଦ। pic.twitter.com/3V4kmV2mQp

— Naveen Patnaik (@Naveen_Odisha) July 30, 2019

“Ganjam district magistrate Vijay Amruta Kulange’s act of planting paddy saplings along with the farmers and telling them about the advantages of line planting signifies dedicated public service. I thank the district magistrate for working close to the people and with a sense of dedication,” reads the tweet.

While he is grateful to the Chief Minister for the generous words and the people who praised him, the humble Collector believes that he did not go out of his way or did nothing extraordinary.

“I am a fan of Spiderman, and his famous dialogue ‘with power comes great responsibility.’ I am responsible for the welfare of my people and the district. Whenever I get an opportunity I go outside my office to understand people’s problems, it is an easier way to address the crisis,” says Kulange.

Kulange now hopes to replicate the activities of Team Clean City across the district and ultimately end the practice of sticking posters in public areas.

“There is no issue in the world that citizens and government together cannot solve,” he concludes.

Also Read: ‘My School, My Farm’: Mizoram IAS Officer Tackles Malnutrition With a Brilliant Idea!

Featured Image Source: Vijay Kulange/Facebook

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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Sudha Mahalingam remembers something that her mother told her, many years ago, when she was a young girl growing up in Chennai.

“Sudha, if you want to bathe in the sea, you can’t wait for the waves to subside. Do it when they hit you, because they won’t ever stop. Similarly, if you want to travel the world, travel when you have other claims on your time. Even if you have children or other responsibilities, take the plunge and find the opportunity to travel. Why wait? If you want to do something, do it now.”

Want to experience the true beauty of India? Check out some interesting travel packages here. 

And then there was a trip to Mahabalipuram with her family, where she saw gypsies in their vehicles emblazoned with the flags of different countries.

“All I wanted was to join their group and embark on an adventure of my own. I couldn’t stop thinking about how a whole new world had opened itself to them through travel, and I wanted to experience the same.”

Is it any wonder then, that today at 68, Mahalingam has six passports and has travelled to more than 65 countries?

While the former journalist did travel across Europe when her bureaucrat husband was posted to different locations, it wasn’t close to the childhood dream she once nursed.

These trips were structured and formal. Five-star hotels were booked, everything was pre-planned, a driver was always on standby, and nights were spent in cosy hotel rooms.

“I wanted to explore places in their raw and natural beauty.”

This opportunity did not come to her until she was in her mid-40s. After quitting journalism, she became an energy sector analyst for the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis. When she started travelling alone on work, she finally found the freedom to kickstart her backpacking journey across the world.

Armed with her backpack, travelling to remote locations, with no booking, living in youth hostels on a shoestring budget, the fearless explorer also moved on to writing a memoir of the adventures and misadventures these journeys in a book, The Travel Gods Must Be Crazy.

Shedding light on how travel has the potential of empowering women, she says,

“All your life, you are told what’s best for you, the things you can and cannot do, how certain places are safe and others are not. Travelling helps to put these preconceived notions and stereotypes to the test. It helps you not only discover yourself but also develop confidence and identify your strengths. It teaches you to draw upon your reserves and tackle crises too.”

One of her first solo trips was back in 1996, where she travelled to Kailash Mansarovar on a 32-day trek. She recalls how her youngest son, who was a 5-year-old, slept each night with her saree wrapped around his form for a peaceful nights sleep when she was away.

“It taught me a lot about myself, especially my hardiness. It helped me learn that I could do things alone.”

Sudha also realised much later in her life that she wasn’t afraid of anything. From travelling with absolute strangers in the dead of night to crossing terrorist crossfires with army personnel in the Kashmir Valley, she has done it all.

However, there was one hair-raising diving incident on her trip to the Great Barrier Reef, that she is unlikely to forget.

Sudha had set out to spot manta rays on Lady Elliot Island, the southernmost coral cay of the Great Barrier Reef.

Although certified, she wasn’t an experienced diver and was travelling with a group of professional photographers from Japan who wanted to dive deeper into the ocean. So the instructor suggested she go 40 feet to the bottom of the seafloor and surface within 50 minutes before her oxygen cylinder ran out.

“He instructed me that there would be a rope attached to a buoy, and once I resurfaced, I would have to hang onto it. They would return and pull me out. He took the rest of the group to the deeper end of the ocean. What I did not realise was the photographers had two cylinders on them, this meant they would be gone not for 50, but 100 minutes. When I surfaced, all I could see was heavy rains, grey clouds, and the strong waves. I was struggling to stay afloat. For almost an hour, I kept bobbing up and down and drank a lot of saltwater in the process. Almost an hour had passed. Just as I was about to give up and telling myself, ‘This the end, Sudha. Bid your goodbye. You are going to drown,’ the boat arrived. Once they hauled me up, I threw up in the boat. It was the only time there was an iota of fear in me.”

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She fondly recalls her trek through the virgin Borneo rainforest amid the downpour in 2012 and says that the experience remains unparalleled.

“It was nature in its rawest form. We had to walk with our feet sinking in the sodden floor, avoiding stepping on poisonous fungus, escaping creepy crawlies such as leeches and killer ants, and that was scary. But the beauty of the sight which was unrivalled and untouched by humans made every moment worth it.”

The backpacker believes in packing light by repeating a few pairs every day and ensuring to carry enough pairs of undergarments. Proper shoes, her camera, its lens, and tripod are absolute essentials. They help her document her travels after all. Her passport and money are always on her person in the sling bag strung across her shoulder.

Sudha takes copious notes on each of these trips, many of which have found space in the articles she has written for dailies and magazines in the country. Many a time, the income from these pieces helps her recoup some of the travel expenses too.

She never carries food, tea or coffee because she loves sampling the local fair and devours options in the vegetarian spectrum.

Over her journeys in the last two decades, trekking hills, exploring the ocean, walking through crowded streets, camping on crowded sofas in dorms and youth hostels, Sudha has made friends from across the world.

Swapping stories over drinks or gazing at the night sky together, the vivid and distinct individuals she met during these trips taught her how there are many ways to live your life.

Some stay in touch, some move on. But each of them has a different story, each fascinating in their own way.

While her children became used to her often being on trips, they have been her strongest support, and she continues to share an excellent relationship with them. Her husband, who initially found it difficult to understand her angst and need to travel, started acknowledging her passion after she gained recognition from colleagues and friends about her travel writing.

“He started seeing me in a new light. Though he is not big on travel himself, every time he watches Nat Geo and comes across any interesting locations, he is the first one to tell me to add it to my list.”

As she bids adieu, she adds how she makes five-six trips a year. The next locations on her bucket list include Madagascar in September and Patagonia in December.

She ends with a message for women travellers, saying, “All limits are self-imposed. If you dream big, you will go places. At most things, you may realise your strengths and sometimes your limitations, if you fail for whatever reason. But keep that fire in your belly burning. Don’t stop and don’t give up.”

Sudha made her childhood dream come true and has surely made her maa proud.

Want to take a visual trip through her travelogue? Follow her blog at http://footlooseindian.com/

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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“Even in his last few days when he was admitted in the ICU, Rahul questioned us about an upcoming event of the Yoddhas. His passion for educating people was way bigger than any of the needles, wires or medicines,” shares Rashi, talking about her husband’s dedication for the platform he had created for people living with cancer—a deadly disease to which he sadly succumbed on 13 June 2017.

That day a son, a husband, a brother and a comrade of hundreds of cancer patients died.

Devastated though she was, Rashi Yadav knew she had to pull herself together to honour the legacy of her husband.

Founded by Rahul to bring together people living with cancer so that they can share their daily ordeals, the Yoddhas is an organisation helping cancer patients across India.

The Yoddhas family is 15,000-strong, with volunteers from Delhi University, raising aid through crowdfunding to help cancer-patients financially. “Rahul raised funds for his treatment. Crowdfunding is a great platform to lessen the financial burden on families of cancer patients.”

For Rahul Yadav, a resident of Delhi living in Bengaluru, it had started with a mild stomach ache, cough and cold which did not subside despite taking medications.

It was during the same time when dengue made a comeback in Bengaluru. Thinking the symptoms might be of dengue, Rahul went to Manipal Hospital and got tests done in August 2013. All results were negative. However, the doctors had their suspicions and conducted a few more tests. When the results came, they had the unfortunate task of breaking the heart breaking news to Rahul’s wife, father and mother.

He had Plasma cell leukaemia (PCL).

PCL, a rare form of aggressive cancer is where high levels of abnormal plasma cells circulate in the blood. The healthy plasma cells fight infection, but in a PCL patient, instead of antibodies, the body produces paraproteins that cannot fight infections.

The most common treatment options for PCL are chemotherapy and stem cell transplant. However, the survival rates of a PCL patient is shorter than a patient with myeloma.

Once they heard the terrible news, Rashi’s parents flew down from Delhi and helped shift Rahul to undergo treatment at the Army Hospital Research And Referral, Delhi and later, at BLK Hospital.

The husband-wife duo, both hailing from army families, stayed positive through the 15 painful chemotherapy sessions and surgeries including gallbladder removal and two Bone Marrow Transplants. Rahul, always social and ready to make friends, forged several friendships at the hospital.

They would often exchange ideas, solutions and ways that could make chemotherapy less exhausting, mentally and physically. These talks not only proved helpful but also motivating for cancer patients. Rahul made a Whatsapp group and even started a Facebook group to scale up his mission, Rashi tells The Better India (TBI).

He named the group ‘Yoddhas’ which means fighters. “For every cancer patient, it is nothing less than a battle. They fight the disease irrespective of the outcomes,” she adds.

Within a couple of months, 300 cancer patients from across India had become part of the group.

Despite his deteriorating health, Rahul accepted invitations from schools, clubs, groups to talk about PCL and continued with the work of Yoddhas. He wanted this platform to become a worldwide phenomenon, and in pursuit of this goal, Rahul applied for ‘Youth Entrepreneurship Competition 2014’, a competition for young entrepreneurs. ‘Yoddhas’ won the People’s Choice Award and also received the 2nd prize under ‘Best Project’ category. The happy couple flew to Berlin to receive the award.

Back home, the group started receiving several calls from people who spoke about their experiences openly, “Many people do not share about their cancer out of embarrassment or sympathies they get. Rahul’s journey motivated hundreds of people to accept their condition and talk about the same freely,” says Rashi.

When Rahul died in 2017, the condolences poured in from everywhere and the support shown by the Yoddhas made the family more resolute to honour Rahul’s legacy.

Even now, Yoddhas religiously conducts support group meetings where cancer survivors are also invited to speak about their victorious battles.

Rahul used to say I am fighting a battle I didn’t choose, the rules of engagement are not under my control. But how I react to the circumstances is my choice, and no one can take that from me. If I can help others feel even a bit of how Rahul felt, it would be a great honour for me, shares Rashi.

Rahul’s parents Major General (Dr). S N Yadav (Retd.) and Krishna Yadav devoted themselves to take Rahul’s dream forward. “My late father-in-law stood like a rock and encouraged me to keep his vision alive and continue helping others.”

Unfortunately, he passed away in a car accident in April 2019.

From educating students and corporate houses about life and health insurances, helping patients connect with doctors, caregivers, visiting bone marrow registries to raising money, the organisation started by Rahul is touching several lives each day.

Worldwide, one million people are diagnosed with (PCL) every year. If you wish to help Yoddhas and Rahul’s family fight against cancer, you can click here. You can also make donations to the following bank account:

Yoddhas Indians Fighting Against Cancer
ICICI Bank
Account no.- 164605000026
IFSC- ICIC0001646
Account type – Current

Also Read: Fighting Cancer to Travel the World: Mumbai Couple’s Love Story Will Leave You Teary-Eyed!

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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The 12-year-old girl standing in the middle of the green field was oblivious to the beauty around her. Her stance upright, her face focussed on the task at hand, her shoulders too slender to bear the weight of the dhol she was playing.

But bear it, she did.

Are you a lover of history and tradition? Want to delve into forgotten ancient games of India? Check options here.

You could see it in the tilt of her chin that she would master this instrument someday. She kept beating the drum till its sound filled the field and beyond; her ustad was still not happy.

“Not loud enough! The sound should be deafening. How can you make someone want to dance when you don’t show the same energy while playing the dhol?” he admonished her.

The girl took her teacher’s words to heart for two years later, at the age of 14 she garnered recognition within India and across borders as the ‘youngest female dholi’ or ‘the Dhol girl of India’.

This is Jahan Geet Singh.

Born to Harcharan Singh, a judicial officer and Parminder Kaur in Chandigarh, Jahan has always chosen unconventional paths. No wonder that her parents changed her surname to Singh from Kaur!

“Within the Sikh community, it is common for young men to adopt ‘Singh’ which stands for lion, and women to adopt Kaur which means a princess. When I was growing up, my parents told me I was no less than a son, so instead of calling me Jahan Geet Kaur, they called me Jahan Geet Singh.”

Thanks to her parents and their progressive upbringing, Jahan was always encouraged to test her strengths, chase her dreams, and not shy away from anything traditionally considered a part of the male bastion.

This was perhaps one of the reasons when a 12-year-old Jahan walked up to her parents asking them if she could learn to play the dhol, they were neither surprised nor opposed to the idea. Instead, they told her, ‘Why not? Do it.’

The eight kg dhol that Jahan picked up at the tender age of 12 has become a part of her identity. Now at 21, the young woman, pursuing Law from the Panjab University, has given hundreds of live performances across India and abroad. She even debuted on TV channels and has won an impressive line-up of awards, including ones at the state-level.

Her videos have garnered millions of views and she has over two lakh followers on social media too!

Today, wherever her parents go, they are known as the Dhol Girl’s parents.

When asked how the inclination to play dhol began, she says, “I grew up rooted deep into Punjabi culture, where no festive celebrations were complete without a dhol. Even at a time when most of my friends preferred western instruments such as a guitar or a Casio over a sitar or a harmonium, I was inclined to the dhol. I still remember how at a family function, I was awed by one of my cousins playing the instrument. And all I could think about was—I want to learn this.”

Until then, Jahan had never thought she was breaking stereotypes. Yes, she had always seen men play the dhol. But she thought, perhaps some women played too, just that she never had the opportunity to come across them. It was only a matter of time until she realised that her request made people’s heads turn and speak in hushed whispers.

I struggled a lot to find a teacher. Every time I approached people for guidance, their initial question to me would be, ‘Kisne sikhni hai?’ (Who wants to learn it?) they would roll their eyes when I said I would be the student. They would say things like, ‘Why would a girl want to play dhol? Girls don’t play dhol? Don’t you have any shame? Do something else.”

Hope came in the form of Sardar Kartar Singh. A father of four daughters himself, when Jahan first asked him to teach her, he paused. He thought to himself, ‘If my daughters asked something of me, I would never refuse.’ So he declared me his eldest daughter and became my mentor.”

Almost two to three hours a day, after school, 12-year-old Jahan would walk on the boundaries of open fields, playing the dhol out loud.

Right from day one, Jahan, unlike other students, began with the big-sized traditional dhol.

“I continue to play the same one, and intend to use it forever,” says the determined girl.

The challenges were many. The instrument was heavy and difficult to carry for the young girl because it required immense upper body strength.

“My teacher would tell me, ‘When you play the dhol for an hour, you do double the upper body exercise that you would in the gym. Because when you have to make someone dance to your beat, you have to put in double the energy.’ So often my hands would get tired, my shoulders would ache. My hands would bleed and have bruises all over them. I started slow, where I would put the dhol on the ground and learn, then put it on a chair, eventually I decided to pick it up and play it as I moved.”

And regardless to say, the efforts have paid off.

Recollecting her first performance at a youth festival, she adds, “When I first walked on to the stage, no one in the audience expected me to actually play the dhol. They thought I would just act or dance for a bit and keep the dhol down. They were amazed and the response was phenomenal.”

Despite the media attention that the youngster has garnered, she continues to stay grounded, keeps promoting the traditional instrument and its heritage and inspire other young girls and women to break glass ceilings.

In her final message, she says, “No activity, hobby or profession is exclusively for men or women. The first step to teach our kids that is to start treating our boys and girls equally. We need to teach our boys to be just as gentle and kind as girls are, and our girls to be just as bold and outgoing as boys. If I stopped believing in myself, the dhol girl wouldn’t exist. And so, as women and young girls, we have to start considering ourselves ‘equals’ and start believing in ourselves. Then, we will be unstoppable.”

Did this story inspire you? Then get in touch with her on her Facebook page.

Watch her in action below:

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(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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The kind of work 63-year-old retired bank officer Amarjit Kaur Dhillon does, brings many moments of heartache to her.

Like the death of a 12-year-old child from Gorakhpur due to hepatitis, who passed away on his birthday which was to come a few days after Valentine’s Day, 2013. When Dhillon asked the mother of the child about his last wishes, the inconsolable mother told her that her boy wanted to go home to celebrate his birthday with new clothes, a cake, noodles and candles.

“I went to the market, bought a near pair of jeans, shoes, shirt, goggles, a heart-shaped cake and accessories despite heavy rains. My sister-in-law, meanwhile, cooked some noodles at home and brought it to the hospital in a tiffin,” she recalls.

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After arranging all things, Dhillon accompanied the mother to the cremation ground. There, they cut the cake and distributed it to those attending his cremation. They even touched the child’s lips with pieces of cake as even in death, they wanted to respect the young boy’s wishes.

“However, seeing the agony on the mother’s face as we proceeded to cremate her son is something I’ll never forget,” adds Dhillon.

Painful though such moments are, Dhillon has decided to dedicate life to help the poorest amongst us and give their loved ones a dignified funeral.

Since 2000, the year she took voluntary retirement from her job at the Punjab and Sind Bank, Dhillon has helped cremate more than 300 bodies of those whose families couldn’t afford a proper burial and those who have no one.

Born and raised in Patiala, Punjab, Dhillon found a job with the bank in the late 1970s, and moved to Chandigarh.

Later, she took voluntary retirement to serve the needy.

Long before she began helping poor families give their loved ones a dignified funeral, she was deeply engaged in social work donating her own money and collecting from her colleagues to fund kidney transplants and organise medical camps for the Red Cross.

“I began my social service work by helping patients finance their heart surgeries, although my focus now has shifted to helping the poor get their final rites in dignity. Thus far, I have helped over 100 heart patients at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh,” says Dhillon, speaking to The Better India (TBI).

However, it was a visit to PGIMER with her mother in 1998 that changed the scope of her work.

“There, I saw so many poor patients struggling for shelter, food, medicine and treatment. Seeing this broke my heart. From thereon, I dipped into my pocket to help poor patients with money to buy food or medicines. I wanted to help them in anyway I could. Two years later, when I visited the hospital I found out about the unidentified bodies lying in the mortuary unattended. The hospital attendants there asked me whether I could help them cremate these bodies to which I agreed. I don’t know why I agreed, but haven’t looked back since,” says Dhillon.

One of her earliest memories of this work is helping a young woman whose husband had passed away after undergoing heart surgery in May 2000. When news came to Dhillon that the young man from Bihar had passed, and his wife had lost consciousness, she took their three children to the gurdwara inside PGIMER, while the mother was taken to the local Red Cross, where Dhillon booked a funeral van for her. Prior to his passing, Dhillon regularly brought food and clothes for the wife and children.

Till this day, she sits at the emergency ward of PGIMER, guiding patients to the right departments, helping the needy with food, medicine and shelter, and in case of an unfortunate death, attends to their cremation.

“I receive a handsome pension, and that money is usually enough for whatever little I do. There are also various organisations in society that also assist me for any kind of special work. When my pension money isn’t enough, I reach out to individual donors who have given me their contact details. It’s not often that I have to ask other donors for money, but only if I have to and then reach out to the first person that comes to my mind. Fortunately, no one has ever said ‘no’ to my call for help,” she says.

Although she seeks no monetary support from the local administration, the Punjab State Civil Supplies Corporation (Punsup) in 2008 donated an ambulance, which helps her carry the body from the hospital to the cremation. This ambulance service is totally free. A local firm provided her with a driver, besides helping her foot the fuel bill. On the odd occasion or during certain emergencies, she drives the ambulance herself.

She recalls an instance in February 2002 when a father refused to participate in his daughter’s final rites, who had died suffering from a rare ear cancer. Dhillon, who had taken care of the deceased from Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, made all the necessary arrangements for her funeral.

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“I arranged the wood, and settled the funeral pyre there. Unfortunately, her father, a well-educated man, bluntly refused to participate in the funeral proceedings. I asked him, why aren’t you helping with the cremation. What he said gave me a real jolt. He told me that his daughter meant nothing to him because she was married and that her husband should’ve performer her final rites. I was so angry, but we eventually proceeded to give her a dignified funeral. Even today, I feel terrible about the incident,” she recalls.

Despite these heartbreaking moments, Dhillon has no intention of stopping her work. But she is also looking to expand the scope of her work, helping women assert their status in a male-dominated community. She is looking to specifically target the practice of dowry.

“She is doing great service and she has full support of our family. I ensure that I drive her around whenever she has to run errands,” says Manjit Kaur, her sister-in-law, speaking to the Hindustan Times. A source of motivation and strength, Manjit and her husband’s (Amarajit’s younger brother) family have stood like a rock behind Dhillon.

For her efforts, she has won various accolades at the state level. Meanwhile, even doctors at PGIMER have a real sense of appreciation for her work.

“She has done great work in helping poor patients, and giving the unattended deceased persons their last rites with dignity. For the last 20 years. I’ve seen her on the hospital premises, serving the poor with her free ambulance service to take the deceased, who either don’t have anyone claiming them or are too poor to pay for a proper funeral. She conducts their final rites, spending money from her own pocket. She gives them medicines and food, and is a genuine philanthropist. At the hospital, we call her the Iron Lady because she’s doing such a tough job,” says Dr Vipin Kaushal, professor in hospital administration, PGIMER, speaking to TBI.

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

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Bharti Gelani and Honey Lulla first met during the first year of junior college.

Remembering her first memory of Bharti, Honey says,

“I remember her as a skinny tomboy with really short hair, who was wearing baggy clothes to look fuller. She was very shy and soft-spoken, but when she stepped out and rode a Hero Honda bike, five times her size, I was amazed. She looked so cool; I knew we would be friends.”

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From the heartbreaks of teen life to attaining professional goals, the two girls grew up in each other’s pocket—close-knit, almost inseparable.

It was Bharti’s accident 11 years ago, that proved how deep the bond of friendship could run.

They were 26 then. Bharti had gotten engaged to the love of her life and was ecstatic.

“We were all celebrating her engagement at a club that night. She stepped out to the basement to attend to a call. As she was walking, someone brushed passed her. The next thing she knew, she had lost her balance and slipped down the stairs. I got a call from her number saying, ‘Your friend has fallen off the stairs. Could you rush here please?'”

When Honey rushed the spot, Bharti was on the floor. She was bleeding as Honey moved her head into her lap. All she heard her say was, “‘Honey I can’t feel my legs.”‘

It took the ambulance more than an hour to reach the spot, and they reached the hospital around 4 am. There weren’t many doctors. Honey kept yelling at the staff to rush and attend to Bharti, who was strangely calm.

It wasn’t until the eight or nine months after the accident that the gravity of the incident hit them.

“I am petrified of hospitals. But that day, watching her bleed in my lap, I knew I couldn’t chicken out, We had to be strong for each other. And I realised that we don’t realise how strong we are until life throws curveballs at us. Also, a lot of my strength came from Bharti herself and her attitude towards life. We knew she was going to get married in a few months, so we had to face it. The accident had damaged her spine. So even when I was in the hospital the first-night getting help, she told me, ‘Chill, I don’t feel anything below. And I remember thinking to myself—How in the world is this woman like this?’ She was my rock.”

Did the breakdown happen? Yes, it did. The two of them cried in each other’s arms, and eventually, Bharti decided to postpone the wedding.

“My fiancé and his parents were really supportive, and he even flew down. But after two years of continuous treatment, physiotherapy and consulting top specialists India and abroad, we realised there was no cure. It took me time to get on to the wheelchair too. It had been a long wait. It wasn’t fair to the man I loved or his family. I told him that I loved him too much and that he should move on,” says Bharti.

Her accident was also a wake-up call for Honey.

“My perspective on life changed. I became sensitive to everything around me. It made me realise how we took the most simple things we could do for granted, like getting up from your bed and feeling the floor underneath your feet. Simple routines for us changed. From shopping to restaurants, before we entered any place to hang out, we first ensured if it was accessible first.”

Honey became one of Bharti’s strongest pillars of support apart from her family.

“I don’t know what my life would be like without Honey. She was always there and continues to be. In the beginning, when I found it difficult to sit or wash my hair, she would drop everything to come home and help the caretaker do it.”

The unbreakable duo went on to establish the Honey Lulla Salon, one of the first wheelchair-friendly salons in Mumbai that they continue to run together.

Apart from being partners at work, they also set out to explore the world together.

Taking two trips a year, they have travelled across Thailand, the US, Spain, Russia, New Zealand, Prague, Budapest and very recently Turkey.

As Friendship Day approaches, I ask the ladies what their definition of true friendship is.

Honey quips, “Friendship is really about having the greatest experience together. It is about accepting the opposite person, just the way they are and appreciating it. It is love in its purest form that allows you the freedom of expression. You don’t have to think twice before acting or behaving a certain way in front of a friend. You can confess anything to them with childlike honesty. No fears attached. Everyone should have that one friend that they can be their true selves with.”

And on that note, we hope that every Bharti finds her Honey, and every Honey her Bharti.

ALSO READ: 53 Years & Counting: The Story Behind Mumbai’s Favourite Sardar Pav Bhaji!

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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Six people, all from different fields.

While some are experts on innovation and conservation, a few others create a harmony of varied cultures with music.

But, there is one thing common in all of them—the inspiring story of their life’s journey to create a meaningful contribution to the world.

These stories are worth sharing, and Josh Talks has been doing just that!

A passionate organisation, Josh Talks is on a mission to unlock human potential and rouse positive action, through stories of inspiration, because they believe that a well-told story can indeed shape the ideas, attitudes, lives and eventually the world into something positive and significant.

With over 1500 talks in across 30+ cities in India, the organisation has touched more than 100 million lives, both online and offline, in the last four years.

And, this year they are back with these distinguished individuals who have a great story to tell.

Here’s a peek into who those amazing speakers are.

1. Tamanna Sharma, Earthling First

Tamanna is a resident of Delhi and her company, Earthling First, targets a calamitous environmental hazard—the waste generated during events.

Events like weddings, fairs, conferences, and concerts, to name a few, leave behind a substantial trail of waste which is ultimately dumped in the local landfills and water bodies, increasing toxic levels there.

Earthling First cuts through this practice to ensure reduced waste generation at the source—through sustainable planning and responsible disposal—and facilitates the sending back of waste for the purpose of recycling.

As a result, not only is the venue trash free; the environment remains unscathed too!

“The concern doesn’t just rest upon diverting waste. From careful waste assessment during the planning stage to bringing catering partners who offer biodegradable alternatives on-board, we focus on overall sustainability. Even the housekeeping staff is carefully selected and trained for the event,” she says to The Better India.

2. Monica Dogra, Actor-Artist

An actor-singer, Monica is one half of the band, Shaa’ir + Func. She has worked in six feature films, including 2010’s Dhobi Ghat, released five studio albums and has, over the years, carved out a niche for herself in India’s experimental music space. She is also a member of the judging panel of The Stage, India’s first English music talent show.

Monica’s story of following her passion as a musician amid various struggles in New York is worth listening to.

3. Pracheer Dutta, Kriya Labs

The co-founder of Kriya Labs, Pracheer has been instrumental in finding a solution to stop the burning of agro-waste, by facilitating the development of products and processes that create low-cost, high-quality and eco-friendly items from waste natural fibres or material.

Incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT-D), the startup has developed a technology that can convert agro-waste like rice straw into pulp, and further process it to create biodegradable cutlery.

4. Karan Magotra, Associate Director ESCC Division, TERI

For the last 12 years, Karan has been a top professional in the field of climate change mitigation. From being a fellow in the Centre for Global Environmental Research, he now heads the climate change department at TERI.

With the bulk of his expertise in the field, he leads a team of 22 researchers who manage over 20 climate mitigation projects. A prominent man, who has been instrumental in providing policy advisory on climate finance and carbon markets, his knowledge and experience inspire young innovators and researchers to find sustainable solutions to environmental issues of the globe!

5. Sanjeeta Bhattacharya, singer/songwriter

A multi-talented artist, Sanjeeta is a graduate of the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston and has established her name in the country’s indie music space.

The singer-songwriter has had an incredible journey so far—she studied Hindustani Classical music for eight years, and then moved to the world of Jazz, Flamenco, Bossa nova, R&B, Latin and Balkan folk music—and her undeniable talent is proof that she will only move forward.

6. Arpit Dhupar, Chakr Innovation

Arpit is a mechanical engineer with a special interest in creating technological advancements that have a positive mass impact on existing problems.

This interest led him to embark on a quest to find solutions for Delhi’s air pollution woes, which eventually led to the founding of Chakr Innovation, an organisation that builds technologies to eliminate the pollution caused by the combustion of fossil fuels. In fact, its award-winning technology takes diesel soot from generators and converts it into inks and paints.

So far, his efforts as the Chief Technology Officer of Chakr Innovation have saved over 3 billion litres of air from being polluted!

All these years, it was the work of these six individuals that spoke for them. Now you have a chance to witness them telling the stories behind the exemplary feats. So, wait no more and get set ready to watch, listen and get inspired!

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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On December 22, 2012, Tanmay Pendse’s actor brother, Akshay Pendse, his two-year-old son and veteran actor Anand Abhyankar met with an accident along the Pune-Mumbai Expressway.

A speeding truck travelling from the opposite direction jumped the wrong lane in the absence of dividers and collided with Akshay’s vehicle that was travelling from Pune to Mumbai near the Urse toll plaza.

The tempo rammed into the vehicle head-on with such a force that it killed Akshay, his son, and Abhyankar on the spot.

The death of his loved ones was the turning point in the Pune-based man’s life.

But instead of complaining about the lack of road safety policies, infrastructure or adherence to rules, the then 28-year-old took the road less taken.

He became a road-safety hero who made the safety of the expressway, the sole aim of his life.

At 34, over the last six years, Tanmay Pendse has spent more than 15 lakh from his pocket and successfully worked with authorities from the Indian Roads Congress, the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), the Police department, the home ministry, engineers and IAS officers in the Mantralaya and personalities from the Marathi film industry to ensure the number of fatalities on the expressway decrease every year.

Speaking to The Better India, Pendse says, “Before losing my brother and nephew to the accident, I would criticise the government, like others around me. But their death made me stop complaining and start looking for solutions. I couldn’t wait for someone else to do anything. If I wanted to make the Expressway safer for others, I would have to do it myself.”

Tanmay runs his venture, Catalyst Outdoors, which conducts corporate training, adventure and heritage tourism, and took almost 1.5 years only to complete his research.

Over 18 months, he met several road safety heroes and experts on the ground, met political leaders, engineers, police personnel and visited the expressway more than a 1000 times, to make a 200-page research report.

He also undertook an in-depth study of roads in Korea, Canada and Australia. After comparing it to the six-lane Mumbai-Pune expressway and scourging through statistics on road fatalities, he made a detailed proof of concept on infrastructural facilities and steps that were required to reduce road fatalities.

Known as one of the deadliest highways in the country, this expressway, runs across mountains and plateaus. It is India’s first six-lane concrete, high-speed, access controlled tolled expressway and spans a distance of 94.5 km connecting Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra and the financial capital of India, with Pune, the cultural capital of Maharashtra and an industrial and educational hub.

“Since the time it was built in 2002, there have been over 5,000 accidents and 1,900 deaths, which is an unfortunate and shameful statistic. Now when I look back, I do think it is disappointing that many of us, wait for a personal loss to strike us, before we decide to take matters into our own hands. What we fail to realise is, road safety is just as much our responsibility as theirs. So if we see a problem at hand, instead of complaining about it, why don’t we brainstorm logical solutions that fit within the law and put it across in the right way?”

Some of the leading issues that the man recognised were the absence of dividers, barricades and brifen ropes.

His research revealed that since the 1960s, brifen ropes have proven to be an efficient safety technique on highways and expressways. Used in more than 110 countries, a Brifen wire-rope barrier fence avoids a speeding vehicle from jumping a lane. It successfully cushions a vehicle’s impact first and then safely redirects the vehicle.

Working with the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) and IRC, and meeting with authorities in the state government including CM Devendra Fadnavis, Pendse was able to convince the state government sanctioned a project to install Brifen wire ropes on the highway in 2013. These ropes cover almost 40 km of the expressway currently. They have also installed a crash barrier system.

They also worked on installing closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras along the expressway that can detect a vehicle’s registration number. Though these are currently only a few, the idea is to eventually cover the entire stretch with it, says Pendse.

Pendse’s study also revealed that plenty of victims who meet with accidents on the expressway are either rushed to Lokmanya hospital in Pune or MGM hospital in Khallapur. Both hospitals at a considerable distance, which leads to several victims losing their lives during the golden hour.

This led to the demand for a trauma centre. This emergency trauma centre will be up and running in the next two-three months, claims Pendse.

“The CCTV cameras revealed that more than 35,000 vehicles travel to and fro on the expressway every day. On Ganesh Chathurthi, over 21 hours, more than 4225 vehicles were seen speeding and jumping lanes. It is impossible to manually keep a track. So we are also working towards installing, an ITMS (Intelligent Traffic Management System) to control lane violation,” he says.

To create awareness among citizens, they are also working on creating short films on road accident and safety and distributing these free of cost to restaurants and hotels along the stretch to play for customers.

All said and done; the journey hasn’t been easy for Pendse.

“When my brother died, and I started working on the project, a lot of people did not take me seriously. A few critics even questioned my genuity saying I was trying to capitalise on my brother’s death. But I did not let it affect me. My family, friends, the media and a lot of people from the Marathi film industry believed in my work and supported me. Today thanks to all our collaborative efforts with authorities, we have been able to get the fatalities down by 38 per cent.”

In his final message, he says, “I lost two dear family members. I know I cannot change that. But I wouldn’t want others to go through the same pain that my family went through. I know the expressway cannot become a zero-fatality corridor, but I believe we can all join efforts to reduce these numbers.”

Tanmay’s ultimate target is to keep working until he achieves a single-digit fatality rate, and then, expand this project to other critical roads as well.

We wish him the very best. May his tribe grow!

If this story inspired you, get in touch with him on naturecubs@gmail.com

Also Read: They Never Left Each Other’s Side: Mumbai Duo’s Moving Story is #FriendshipGoals!

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

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This article has been sponsored by Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation

In 1946, Arunaben Shankarprasad Desai was a young college graduate. Even as the entire country was in the midst of the freedom struggle, Arunaben believed that true independence would be a myth if its people, especially the marginalised sections, were not individually independent.

This thought eventually gave birth to Vikas Vidyalaya in 1946, which has been working towards achieving the welfare of women and children, living in poor social and economic circumstances.

What started in Wadhwan, with just 40 individuals, has now spread all across Gujarat with over 80,000 beneficiaries in the last 73 years.

In 2005, speaking at an award function about her journey, she had said, “I had just graduated from college when I started social work. At that time, it was very difficult to convince the society that a woman is an independent person. Nowadays it has become comparatively easier and women are participating in each and every field even though the status of women in society has not changed a lot.”

Her journey to make India a better and safer place for women and children began after she came across several reports of human trafficking in Saurashtra.

She began her research into some of the pressing issues of the time, including cruelty against women and untouchability, and Vikas Vidyalaya was established to eradicate these concerns through education, shelter and empowerment.

Under Vikas Vidyalaya, Arunaben started a primary school, two high schools for girls, a polytechnic college, a college for handicrafts as well as colleges for teacher training and vocational training programmes, focused on knitting, tailoring, and embroidery, among others.

She even started a centre that trained women in Amber and Bardoli charkhas.

She also wanted to uplift and empower women holistically. So, started a founding home to provide shelter, healthcare, education and rehabilitation through employment, marriage and even adoption (of younger girls). To bolster the adoption procedure, a rigorous process was initiated.

Also Read: Goons To Threats: Nothing Can Break This 56-YO’s Will To Save Mumbai’s Mangroves

The founding home also provides counselling to women and helps them find practical solutions to the problems that they face in their marriage or families. So far, this service has benefitted 2,600 women. She even started a cosmopolitan hostel, that has helped more than 800 girls till date.

Extending welfare for the differently-abled, she opened several schools for them as well as students with learning disabilities. Further, to ensure empowerment through education and healthcare, she also started an orthopaedic centre, a hospital for the mentally ill, and hygiene centre.

In one of her public speeches, she shared that Jankidevi Bajaj, an Indian independence activist and the wife of Jamnalal Bajaj, provided her with unwavering support and encouragement, which pushed her to do better.

Thanks to her tireless efforts, Arunaben was conferred with the Jamnalal Bajaj Award for Development and Welfare of Women and Children in 2005.

In addition to this, she also received a State Government award, in the field of Child Welfare, in 1981, a Mahila Suraksha Award in 1989 and the Shri Rajiv Gandhi Human Services Award in 2002. Unfortunately, on February 18, 2007, she breathed her last at the age of 83, leaving the nation a great legacy of social and academic excellence.

Today, Vikas Vidyalaya is considered a ‘Fit Person Institution’ providing safe custody to children under the provisions of the Saurashtra Children Act by the Government of Gujarat.

Over the years, the numerous institutions started by her have helped hundreds, immortalising her name as one of the most prominent social workers in India.

(Edited by Gayatri Mishra)

Find more details about the Jamnalal Bajaj Awards here.

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‘Meri zarooratein kam hai, isliye mere zameer mein dum hai’ (My needs are very less, and that’s why my conscience is strong)

This rousing dialogue from the action-packed movie ‘Singham’ is Saurabh Bhawania’s philosophy, of life which he hopes to live up to while discharging his duties as an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer.

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A native of Dumka district Jharkhand, Saurabh cleared the UPSC Civil Services Examination (CSE) in 2018 with an All India Rank of 113. The 32-year-old scored third highest marks (201) in the interview round that took place in April this year. Saurabh cleared the competitive examination in his second attempt after he failed to crack the Mains in his first attempt in 2017.

Forging ahead despite many concerns, objections and ‘it’s not a good idea’, Saurabh topped the competitive exams while being a full-time parent and a working professional in the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Life Before UPSC

Born and raised in a joint family that lay emphasis on education, Saurabh grew up perfecting the balance between studies and extracurricular activities.

My childhood was sans internet. I was provided with everything, and my childhood was a balance between my studies and interests. I could never compromise on cricket, poetry and books at any point of time in my life, including now, Saurabh shares with The Better India (TBI).

Saurabh’s academic life was pretty much on an auto-pilot mode. He moved to Kolkata and pursued a bachelor’s degree in Commerce from St Xavier’s College and later, went for CA and CS followed by an MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies from the University of Delhi.

He worked Capgemini for 1.5 years before joining RBI Kolkata in December 2016. His wife, mother and father also moved to Kolkata to be with him.

It was during his preparations for the RBI tests and interviews when Saurabh realised his interests lay in more than just banking. So while studying for the tests, Saurabh also capitalised on exploring the do’s and don’ts of UPSC.

“I liked my job and banking was and is still interesting for me. But I always wanted my work to benefit people. Multiple factors advanced my liking for UPSC. My father owned a printing press where government officials often visited. He always held high regard for them,” he says.

One of the biggest influences for him was a District Collector of Dumka who interacted with people to understand their problems, “I saw a genuine curiosity [in her] to find out people’s problems and resolve them. She tried very hard to bridge the communication gap between the people and the government. Back then, I wished to be like her.”

Saurabh had casually mentioned UPSC to his wife Parul once, but then he got busy with his RBI job.

‘What happened to your IAS dreams?’ asked Parul a few months later.

I had just turned 29 when I joined RBI, and so for me age was like a time bomb. It was now or never. I decided to take a risk and start preparing for UPSC. My wife and father, as expected, became my biggest cheerleaders. Meanwhile, my mother had certain reservations, he smiles.

Two months into the preparations, Saurabh received the happy news that he and Parul were expecting. And like all expectant parents, Saurabh and Parul’s responsibilities had increased, but the duo was firm on Saurabh’s dream. He looked at parenting and his full-time job as an advantage as each second of his life had become more valuable.

Preparations: Reading Books In Clinics & More

It took Saurabh nearly four to five months to get into the cycle of decoding study patterns, the preparation strategy, and memorising the content. Since there was no time left to join classes, Saurabh relied entirely on self-study.

Dedicating around nine hours a day is a standard plan adopted by most civil services aspirants. But due to a full-time job, Saurabh could only clock in four to five hours daily.

Setting a routine was the most challenging part, “Despite having a knack for Commerce, I chose Management as my optional. That was my first mistake. Beating myself up for not studying for five hours at a stretch was another,” says Saurabh.

Saurabh dropped the rigid approach and started studying whenever he would get time. “If I did not wake up early, I would cover it up by studying at night. I also used my coffee and lunch breaks for scrolling through the news. I tried to end the psychological pressure by thinking of ways to make up.”

Just a week before Prelims in June 2017, Parul delivered a baby boy, and Saurabh balanced his responsibilities well during this period. “I was never a fan of last-minute studies anyway, so my baby boy did not affect my preparations in any way. In the hospital, I was with my books right next to my wife and Pranav throughout.”

His hard work paid off when Saurabh cleared the Prelims with 117 marks and went straight to prepping for MAINS. But now his time had further divided among his family, work and studies.

This propelled Saurabh to work out how to strike a balance between General Studies (GS), Optional, Ethics and Essays. “Optional has the potential to fetch 60 per cent or more marks, and the questions on ethics and essay are more technical-based. I focussed more on these subjects.”

Saurabh made sure he did not miss out on hospital visits or special moments with Pranav. He installed news apps on his phone and found interstices between putting his child to sleep or waiting at the clinic.

However, appearing for the Mains was a wake-up call for Saurabh, “I had almost forgotten how to write in a limited time. My answers were not structured well, they were lengthy and mainly were irrelevant to the questions.”

“Completing entire syllabus was not possible anyway, so I tried studying only a few important topics. It was my self-consolation mode that helped me remain calm and composed,” Saurabh adds.

Falling short of 50 marks, Saurabh did not clear the Mains. His first thought was to give up, “Preparation took a toll on me. I already had a stable job, but something told me to give it another try. This time I had to eliminate the wrongs.”

Sadly, Saurabh had lost his father during this time and found solace, assurance and encouragement from his uncle, Dilip.

Saurabh began preparing anew for UPSC 2018, and this time he had a more organised and practical plan which included spending time with his son, being with him during vaccinations, giving a 100 per cent at his job and looking after his family.

He began with attempting several online mock tests and wrote down all that he had learnt.

No matter how good you are, answering in a structured way is very crucial. Preparing diagrams and flowcharts helped a lot. Mock tests gave me the confidence to answer efficiently in a limited time. I told myself that I had to answer the same way in the exam hall.

While he tried to lessen the pressure on his studies, the work at his office increased. There were days when he had to skip his preparation altogether. Believing that he had nothing to lose, Saurabh trusted his instincts and appeared for the Prelims.

And he cleared it!

A few months later, he appeared for the Mains and sailed through with 814 marks out of 1750. His biggest fear was now over.

“I have given several interviews, and so the interview part was much easier for me than the Mains. I already knew all I had to do now was to clear the Interview round. Taking no risk, I joined classes,” he says. Fortunately, the teacher was flexible enough to accommodate Saurabh anytime during the day. He even made friends at classes who would sit together and help each other work on their drawbacks.

Finally, the interview day arrived. He left home fully prepared and confident. A bit of nervousness did creep in as he was the first to appear for the Interview.

I was hoping not to be the first one, but fortunately I gave the Interview without a nervous breakdown. For the first few minutes, I had goosebumps, but the people taking the Interview made me very comfortable, he shares.

“From asking about issues in West Bengal and Jharkhand to the solutions about improving India’s economy, the questions were like a jackpot!” he beams.

After the Interview, Saurabh focussed on his work and gave as much time as possible to his little one. “I had no expectations, and I knew I had my job to fall back on.”

On 9 April 2019, he received a news that changed his life, “I had cleared the Interview. In my wildest dreams, I had not imagined getting the third highest marks in the Interview round and an AIR of 113. It was overwhelming and unbelievable.”

Two months later, Saurabh quit RBI. For now, he is dedicating all his time to his family before he moves to the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie by August-end.

Age and Status Are Not Obstacles

“It does not matter if you are a parent or a working professional. Taking out five hours is not impossible. All you have to do is sustain the momentum. Do not let a small headache or a family function come in your way. Willpower and discipline are two of your biggest strengths, exploit it wisely. Set your goal and embark on it without fear and doubts,” says Saurabh.

Tips & Tricks

Just like serving people, UPSC preparations cannot be on a blanket approach. Each problem has to be addressed subjectively. Always keep a backup option so that even if you do not clear it, it is not the end of the world. Be careful in choosing your optional and focus on the writing practice. Maintain the continuity, and you are halfway there.

Saurabh’s journey proves that age or even a time crunch is no bar to clearing one of the toughest exams in the country. Experience and the right mental attitude can prove to be your best assets.

Had it not been for my years of experience with which I took every step, I would not have cleared it in my second attempt. The struggle throughout has helped me in some or other way. Age was in my favour, Saurabh signs off.

(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)

Also Read: Interview to Essay Paper in Mains, IAS Officer Shares Strategy to Ace UPSC Exam

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