Author: DDF Mumbai

Hamsa Iyer

6^th  February 13

Drop Dead, a foundation started by Aabid Surti that offers free plumbing services to residents of Mumbai, saves water one drop at a time.

Aabid Surti who lives in Mira Road, a Mumbai suburb, was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from Hindi Sahitya Sansthan by the Uttar Pradesh Government in 2007. He has multiple creative talents. He is a painter, cartoonist, author, playwright and water warrior.

Water warrior?!

In 2007, Aabid Surti read an article in the newspaper that mentioned how much water was lost for every drop wasted. “1 drop wasted in every second implies a 1000 litres of water being wasted on average”. That’s quite a count! I grew up in shanties in Mumbai when I came from Gujrat and I know the value of water. That led me to set up Drop Dead Foundation”, he told me. The aim of the Foundation is to fix leaky taps and help save water. Every Sunday, Surti goes door to door doing just this.

Tejal Shah, the chief co-ordinator of the Foundation, joined Surti five years ago. She goes door-to-door to various apartment complexes to get permission  from secretaries of the housing societies to enter their premises come Sunday. Many apartments have already called them. “We don’t enter the premises without permission. We understand that people are hesitant to open their doors”. But getting prior permission doesn’t imply that everybody allows them to fix their leaky taps.

The most common problem is that the washer has gone bad. Aabid says, “But it costs me Rs.35 to just buy the spindle. The expensive component of the repair is the plumber’s labor cost and we provide that. But even then, we find people who don’t want to fix it”. Rather than get bogged down by such responses, they just go and save the next drop. Once they’re done with the apartment, they make arrangements for their next visit and also drop off a poster the following Monday.

Plumber Riyaz Ahmed also joined Surti three years ago. He found the painter’s work and perspective of saving water drop by drop very interesting. So he offered his services just for Rs.150. But over a time, people have come forward to fund the foundation, so he takes away Rs. 500 every Sunday for his services. These funds come from philanthropists and people who see Surti at various conferences and want to support this simple but effective task.

Together, the trio manage to spread awareness on saving water. Once the leaky pipes are fixed, they stick a sticker right next to the wash basin.

The sticker reads: ‘Save ever

y drop or drop dead’, a message Aabid Surti has carried on. After it sticker is stuck, they take the name and address of the person whose tap they have fixed. Till date, the trio has visited more than 6000 homes in Mira Road. Surti says, “What I am doing is not unachievable. It is simple. You can take up this cause too”.

He has inspired a few people. They write to the painter, who promptly sends off his material- the poster, stcker, plamplete via mail. He says, “One only needs to be determined to continue this. You can join the team on any Sunday. Just call us on 09820184964 and save every drop or drop dead”.

Link : India Water Portal

Dear Sir,

Warm Regards

I just heard about you and your fight for water saving mission.

I wish to educate myself and others on effective ways to prevent elixir on the earth.

If you have some  guideline or program for the same, please let me know.

Professionally I am a lecturer in engineering. I wish my students can do some domestic innovation for saving water.

Your help and guidance will strengthen my desire to save water drop by drop.

thanking you..

Ambrish Nasit

5 June 2013 (Rajkot)

Dear Mr Aabid Surti,

I talked to you on Friday evening.

As I told you, you are really an inspiration. Even socially-conscious people like me wait for ‘starting’ an organisation to do something constructive. You have proved that even one man can be an army and make a big difference to the world.

I have studied in Bombay (that was long ago). I am now in The Hindu Business Line, the financial daily from The Hindu group of Chennai.

I will be glad if you can send me more details about you and your work.

Regards,

Dinakaran Rengachary

Internet Editor

The Hindu Business Line

22^nd May 2010

Hi, I’m representing a group of college students from Delhi. Could you give us some advice and guidance as to how we can extend such a service to Delhi? We would love to take your initiative Drop Dead Foundation further! Its so simple, just take a plumber n go to house. For details see a video made by Rotary Club of Borivalli (Mumbai). It’s on You Tubs. Also rad an article City of Angels “Knock Knock…” by Sharmila Ganeshan, Times of India. Keep in touch.

Hello Sir,

I read about your project for saving water and I was deeply moved and inspired. I have also gone through your art work and it’s delightful.  I have met your son, GD  too.

May you have all the help you need in pursuing your noble work. May God blessyou loads with whatever you want and all the good things in life.

Priya Krishnan

23^rd July 2013

Aabidji
Aapne neki kar paani me daali aur
vo quatre samandar ban gaye…

Swati Shaiwal (indor)
27 June 2013

Aha! Zindagi (Monthly)

9th Jan 09

Drop Dead Movement now in children’s textbooks (2013)

Yaaaay! Happy to announce that my blog post “Saving The Planet One Drop At A Time” about my dad Aabid Surti‘s water conservation movement has been chosen to be a part of children’s textbooks for 2014 by Pearson Education.  A whole new generation will “save every drop”!

Saving The Planet, One Drop At A Time

Aalif Surti

An inspiring true story that shows just how simple it can be for one person with an idea to make a difference.

Aabid Surti is an odd character. A few years ago, the angular, bearded author was invited to meet the President of India to receive a national award for literature at a ceremony in the capital, New Delhi. He politely declined. Absorbed in writing the first draft of his new novel, he cited the reason that he did not have time. But what he has made time for every Sunday for seven years now, is going door-to-door in Mira Road, a non-descript suburb of Mumbai, with a plumber in tow, asking residents if they need their tap fixed for free!

As a distinguished Indian painter and author, Aabid has written around 80 books but no story so moved him as the truth about water scarcity on the planet. “I read an interview of the former UN chief Boutros Boutros Ghali,” he recalls, “who said that by 2025 more than 40 countries are expected to experience water crisis. I remembered my childhood in a ghetto fighting for each bucket of water. I knew that shortage of water is the end of civilized life.”

Around the same time, in 2007, he was sitting in a friend’s house and noticed a leaky tap. It bothered him. When he pointed it out, his friend, like others, dismissed it casually: it was too expensive and inconvenient to call a plumber for such a minor job – even plumbers resisted coming to only replace old gaskets.

A few days later, he came across a statistic in the newspaper: a tap that drips once every second wastes a thousand litres of water in a month. That triggered an idea. He would take a plumber from door to door and fix taps for free – one apartment complex every weekend.

As a creative artist, he had earned more goodwill than money and the first challenge was funding. “But,” he says, “if you have a noble thought, nature takes care of it.” Within a few days, he got a message that he was unexpectedly being awarded Rs.1,00,000 ($2,000) by the Hindi Sahitya Sansthan (UP) for his contribution to Hindi literature. And one Sunday morning in 2007, the International Year of Water, he set out with a plumber to fix the problem for his neighbors.

He began by simply replacing old O-ring rubber gaskets with new ones, buying new fixtures from the wholesale market. He named his one-man NGO ‘Drop Dead’ and created a tagline: save every drop… or drop dead.

Every Sunday, the Drop Dead team – which consisted of Aabid himself, Riyaaz the plumber and a female volunteer Tejal – picked the apartment blocks, got permission from the housing societies, and got to work. A day before, Tejal would hand out pamphlets explaining their mission and paste posters in elevators and apartment lobbies spreading awareness on the looming water crisis. And by Sunday afternoon, they would ensure the buildings were drip-dry.

By the end of the first year, they had visited 1533 homes and fixed around 400 taps. Slowly, the news began to spread.

In March 2008, director Shekhar Kapur, who was working on his own water conservation film, heard about Aabid’s efforts and wrote on his website: ‘Aabid Surti, thank you so much for who you are. I wish there were more people like you in this world. Keep in touch with us and keep inspiring us. Shekhar.’

Local newspapers began to write about Drop Dead, which prompted a further flood of grateful emails and spontaneous messages. One of the most heartfelt messages was from superstar actor-producer Shah Rukh Khan, a longtime fan of Aabid’s work as a comic book creator. After reading the newspaper report titled ‘City of Angels’, he wrote to Aabid: “…It sounds like one of the little big things my dad would have done.Strange that I have enjoyed [your comic] Bahadur in my childhood and enjoyed reading your tap story so many years down the line… when I am father myself. God bless you and yes, I believe in angels after reading the newspaper.”

In 2010, Aabid Surti was nominated for the CNN-IBN CJ ‘Be The Change’ Award. In the same year, a television crew from Berlin flew down to follow him on his Sunday rounds which continued come monsoon or shine.

It’s hard to say how much water he has saved with his mission, given that the faucets he fixed could have continued leaking for months, and maybe years, had he not rung the doorbell one Sunday morning. But conservatively, it could be estimated that he has single-handedly saved at least 5.5m litres of water till date.

In the summer of 2013, the state where Aabid lives is expecting its worst drought in 40 years. Months in advance, the Chief Minister Prithviraj Chauhan has warned citizens to begin conserving water. While ministers lobby for drought-relief packages worth millions of dollars, Aabid sees his own approach as simple and inexpensive.

As he rings another door-bell on yet another Sunday in Mira Road, seven years into his one-man mission, he says: “Anyone can launch a water conservation project in his or her area. That’s the beauty of this concept. It doesn’t require much funding or even an office. And most importantly, it puts the power back in our own hands.”

I would call him a modern-day angel; I am lucky I get to call him dad.