Category: News & Updates

The Eco Guide-L’Eco Guide

21^st Feb. 2014

Creative Impact – Aabid Surti and the Drop Dead Foundation

Rashi Nagpal

‘Little drops make the ocean’ is an old proverbial teaching preached by many. However, it is ironical how many of us actually take heed of the same when it comes to preserving fresh water, the scarcity of which is a serious concern in many parts of India and other countries.

Mr. Aabid Surti, a septuagenarian from suburban Mumbai (India) took it upon himself to follow the proverb to its letter. In 2007, Mr. Surti, accompanied by a local plumber, started visiting houses in the Mira Road locality of Mumbai to enquire about and fix for free any leaking pipes, faucets or taps. It has been reported that Mr. Surti was disturbed by the nonchalant attitude of people for not fixing leaky faucets.

Mr. Surti, who is also an Indian National Award winning author and artist, has set up a non-governmental organization (NGO) called Drop Dead Foundation¹ with the motto ‘Save every drop or drop dead’. The mission of this NGO is not an ordinary one. As reported across several publications, Mr. Surti, himself part of a three member team including a plumber and volunteer, go from building to building, in suburban Mumbai fixing leaking faucets in every household so visited. This schedule is followed meticulously on every Sunday. As reported on the WSJ website² on December 18, 2013, Drop Dead Foundation claims to have fixed nearly 5000 leaky taps in close to 9500 buildings in Mumbai, saving about 5.6 million liters of portable water by the end of 2012. This feat is by no means a small one considering that faulty plumbing is an ignored cause of wastage of the precious natural resource water. In India, ignorance of the magnitude of such water wastage can be due to a laid back attitude towards fixing minor plumbing issues. And also, as many people living in impoverished conditions cannot afford to spend on a plumber.

Mr. Surti’s exploits, certainly an unconventional endeavor, have been met with enthusiasm in the country and even to some extent internationally. It has been reported on the website, The Alternative³, that the German media broadcasted the work of Drop Dead Foundation in a documentary called ‘Wasserknappheit in Bombay: Kampf um den letzten Tropfen‘ (Water shortage in Bombay: Struggle for the Last Drop) across the European continent.

In terms of funding for his efforts, Mr. Surti has been reported (as noted by an article featuring on the website of Asian Development Bank⁴) as saying that initially he invested the cash prize of INR 100,000 (approx. USD 1600) into the Drop Dead Foundation. He had received this endowment as part of a lifetime achievement award for literature from the Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sansthan soon after he started the NGO. It is also reported that amongst other donations received by his NGO from time to time, his NGO attracted donations for its work at the World Plumbing Conference held in Delhi in November 2013, after Mr. Surti made a presentation about the NGO’s work at the Conference.

The accomplishment of the Drop Dead Foundation, albeit unconventional, is due to the commendable effort of an individual to end inaction. It sends across a clear message to us all that every drop counts, well literally!!.

Presentation at Rotary Club of Borivali

12th July 13

Dear Aabidji,

With reference to our yesterday’s telephone talk, it gives me great pleasure to invite you as Guest Speaker in first special meeting of Rotary Club of Borivli for the Rotary year 2013-14 scheduled between 8 and 10pm on 12th July ’13 at MCF Club, Borivlli West.

We request you to speak / give presentation for about 20 – 25 minutes on –Water…precious resource of nature ?

Rotary established in 1905, is an International organisation of service mind people spread in over 200 countries. With its HQ in Chicago, USA it is divided in more than 535 Districts in different geographical regions on our mother earth. Each Rotary District has 75 or more Rotary Clubs. Our District 3140 has 131 Rotary clubs spread in Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai regions. Rotary Club of Borivli is one of the premier clubs in Mumbai. With over 100 members club is celebrating 25 years (Silver Jubilee) of our service to mankind in this region. Our Silver Jubilee President Mayank Desai has many innovative ideas / programs in this year. New Rotary year starts on 1st July of every year and ends on 30th June of consecutive year, this is uniform in Rotary all over .

We request you to please confirm your presence in our meeting scheduled on 12th July and please do mail us your bio-data for formal introduction on that day. We would like to meet you at your convenient place in the first week of July.

Regards,

Prafull J Sharma

Past President

Rotary Club of Borivali

 

Dear Rotarian Friends,

This week we are fortunate to have renowned personality Aabid Surtiji as chief guest who is well known as a painter, illustrator, artist and satirist. He has formed an NGO called Drop Dead.

He will address us in Hindi on how one man, with a firm desire can save millions of liters of Water.

What few know is that he has been waging a lonely war to save every drop of water by going to people’s houses and helping fix their leaking taps.

He has been doing this for over seven years in the sprawling suburb of Mira Road where he knocks on residents’ doors every Sunday morning. He is accompanied by a plumber who carries a bag full of O-rings (gaskets or washers) and repairs the leaks.

Although he has formed an NGO called Drop Dead (with the tagline: Save every drop, or drop dead), his is clearly a thankless job. No one ever asked him to take up such a campaign, no one pays for the cost of the washers, the salary of the plumber, or even for the time that Mr. Surti spends every Sunday morning.

He started by spending from his pocket, diverting award monies received to the cause; over the years he has received a few big and many small contributions from those who have heard about his mission and have been touched by it.

While some people remembered him as a writer or as a painter, few were aware of the fact that he was a screen writer for two outstanding film directors, Raj Khosla and Raj Kapoor, and had written several plays, too.

Mr. Surti had also written the dialogue for Hungama Bombay Ishtyle, a children’s film directed by Ayesha Sayani.

One of his books was titled Sufi which was a reportage mixed with a story of two living characters, one of  them the author himself and the other a man called Iqbal who was “king”? of the underworld and under whom Dawood Ibrahim worked as a youth.

“The book covers most of the prominent facts and figures related to the rise of the organised Muslim crime world in Bombay. It’s a must-read.”

MY STORY IS NOT FROM RAGS TO RICHES, IT’S FROM RAGS TO HAPPINESS,SAYS ARTISTE AABID SURTI

Pl attend Rotary Regular Weekly Club Meeting  on 11^th  July Thursday.

 

Meeting Detail:=

 

Eager to have you all on time so that meeting can be conducted as scheduled.

Yours In rotary.

Mayank D Desai

7^th Oct. 13

Invitation: LUCKNOW 23rd Aug. 2013

The event in LUCKNOW will be organized by Swayam Siddha, a voluntary organization jointly with Department of Environment, Govt of UP & Indian Railways Institute of Transport Management.

Shikha my host Writes: This letter is to explore your interest as a speaker on environment and accordingly request you to address our audience on Environment on 23 August. The event is scheduled at Indian Railways Institute of Transport Management (IRITM) Lucknow.

The event has become considerably popular and has been attracting people from all walks of life among speakers as well as audience. The program has generated considerable awareness among people for environment and have attracted renowned activists like Shri Prem Ji Bhai, Dr Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Dr Rajendra Singh, Dr Veer Bhadra Mishra and a few others like Dr Ajay Mathur, Director General, BEE, GOI, New Delhi, etc. Many organizations like UPRVNL, UPPCL, Shakti Foundation New Delhi have also been associated with the event in past. Like previous years, this event is likely to be attended by about 250-300 audience from different walks of life.

Shikha Tripathi

Swayam Siddha,67 Chitwa Pur Road, Lucknow

tripathi6626@gmail.com

I met this legendary man Aabid Surti at Comic Con Mumbai. While everyone else passed on a business card/brochure/flyer, this special man gave me two beautiful piece of square prints with water drops printed on them. His message lies so deeply in my heart, and always remind me of the scarcity that suffocated my childhood, and the place I come from. Salute  to you sir!

What an idea !

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 just  to 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 with the 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 Foundation, 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.

 

Kshiraj Telang

14^th March 2013

Mumbai Mirror | 17^th Jun 2013

Mirror Heroes

Aabid Surti: Can’t take a leak

Aabid Surti remembers his mother squabbling with neighbours at the community tap in their Dongri chawl for a bucket of water every morning

 Arita Sarkar

Water warrior Aabid Surti sets writing and cartooning aside every Sunday to fix Mira Road’s drippy taps.

Writer, painter and cartoonist Aabid Surti’s most famous comic book hero Bahadur isn’t all that different from his creator. Although Bahadur is the son of a dacoit killed in combat, he fights societal evils as head of the Naagrik Suraksha Dal, helping police down dreaded dacoits.

Surti too, like the protagonist he made famous in the late ’70s through Indrajal Comics, has weekend run-ins with a menace equally deadly – water wastage in Mumbai, the capital of a state facing its worst drought in 40 years.
Every Sunday, the 77-year-old writer of novels, plays and travelogues – for which he has picked up a National Award in 1993, and is most famous for creating India’s longest running cartoon strip about the endearing common man, Dabbuji – visits homes in his suburb of Mira Road to check if residents need their leaking taps fixed. And so, while politicos think up emergency initiatives to fight drought, Surti helps you make a change right at home. A tap that drips once every second wastes close to 1,000 litres of water a month.

It was a statistic UN chief Boutros Boutros Ghali shared in an interview in 2007 that left Surti uneasy. By 2025, more than 40 countries would be grappling with a water crisis. Soon after, during a visit to a friend’s home, Surti spotted a leaking faucet. It’s tough to convince a plumber to come over to replace a worn-out gasket, shrugged the friend.

Surti, whose childhood was spent in a chawl in Dongri, with his mother lining up each morning at the community tap for a precious bucket of water, decided he’d set out the next Sunday to plug leaking taps in his vicinity.

Drop Dead Foundation, his one-man NGO, needed little more than a plumber and O-ring rubber gaskets bought in bulk from a wholesale market. Although the raw material costs little (50 paise a ring), labour and travel don’t come cheap. But funds have trickled in magically.

At the time he launched his campaign, Surti received an unexpected cash prize of Rs 1,00,000 from the Hindi Sahitya Sansthan, Uttar Pradesh, for his contribution to Hindi literature. “God is my fundraiser,” says Surti, perhaps referring to a sudden and generous Rs 10,000 donation from a close friend, and a lifetime achievement award this year from the Maharashtra government which was accompanied by a cash prize of Rs 50,000. “Each time I run out of money, I think of wrapping up. But God pokes someone, and a donation comes in,” says Surti, who spends approximately Rs 565 on every fixing trip, while covering all flats in one residential building. And yet, paucity of funds has restricted his efforts to Mira Road.
Permission from the building secretary and plastering posters that carry information about their scheduled visit and initiative is all it takes before the three-member team arrives at a housing society to fix taps free of charge.

Surti has picked up fans along the way, including actor Shah Rukh Khan and director Shekhar Kapur. And he isn’t done. His next target – overflowing tanks missing a stopcock. He expects to trace these through a network of local newspaper boys. “I receive more love for my work than I probably did from my mother. This is my ibaadat (form of worship).”

INITIATIVE Drop dead foundation

Face behind it Aabid Surti, 77

Nominated for Fixing leaking taps in 10,000 city homes in six years and saving several millions of litres of water

GETS MY VOTE Being a celeb, it was easy for me to gain access to people’s homes. But Aabid is the real grassroots hero – Gulshan Grover, actor, who took up a similar initiative

Mumbai Heroes Part of Mumbai Mirror’s 8th anniversary celebrations, the Heroes campaign looks beyond everyday do-gooders and simple acts of kindness. This initiative will honour people or institutions that have decisively – and positively – changed Mumbai for the better. If you know a hero, tell us about them @ mumbaimirror.com/form.cms