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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

1^st Sept. 2013

MANASI PHADKE

Aabid Surti, a writer and a painter, grew up in a room that he shared with 10 others. Sleeping on the pavement was not unusual for him. Women standing in a queue before a single tap in a ghetto of Dongri and fights breaking out over who would fill up their bucket first was a sight that haunted Surti for years.Surti, now 78, runs an NGO (Non Government Organisation) by the name of Drop Dead. Since February 2007, the Mira Road resident has spent Sundays fixing leaking taps for free to save water. “Every single drop of water was so precious in the ghetto. I had the image fixed in my mind for years,” Surti said.

Surti was once at a friend’s place when he found that a tap was leaking. On his next visit three months later, he found the leaking tap still had not been fixed. This prompted him to conceive the idea of Drop Dead.

“I had read somewhere that if a leaking tap is not repaired for a month, it leads to the wastage of nearly 1,000 litres of water,” Surti said.

“People from the lower-income group may not have the funds to call for a plumber the moment a tap starts leaking,” he said. The Nayanagar area of Mira Road is mostly dominated by people from the lower-income group. Sruti along with plumber Riyaz Ahmed goes from one house to the other in the area to fix leaking taps. One of the women volunteers- either Tejal Shah or Diya Patel- also accompanies him. The leaking taps are fixed free of cost.

Every Monday, Surti visits housing societies in the locality and speaks to the respective secretaries about his NGO. Posters of the NGO are put up on the noticeboard of the societies so that residents are familiar with Surti’s team when they visit their houses on Sunday.

In the first year, Surti says, the group visited 1,666 houses in Mira Road and repaired 414 leaking taps.

While Surti was trying to figure out how the finances will be worked out, he got a cash award of Rs 1 lakh for his writing from an Uttar Pradesh organisation associated with literature. Surti used the entire fund for Drop Dead. By 2010, the funds were exhausted. Unable to see how he would cope with the expenses of his NGO, Surti thought he would have to drop the idea of running Drop Dead. However, help came again. Surti won another cash prize, this time an amount of Rs 50,000 for his writing. He again used the funds for the cause that he believes in.

“When you are doing good work and your intentions are good, help comes,” Surti said. Since then, corporate groups and Rotary Clubs have also extended their support. Once when Surti was sitting outside a house while the plumber was fixing the tap inside, the owner of the house asked him to come in. He asked Sruti if his organisation was the brainchild of a political group and what is it that drop Dead gets in return of the services it renders.

“He was a Muslim. So, I asked him if he offers namaaz. He said yes. When I asked him the reason, he said he does it to please God. I said, exactly the same reason why I run this organisation,” Surti said. “Yeh meri ibaadat hain (This is my worship),” he added.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/writer-painter-and-now-a-crusader-of-water-conservation/1162871/

GULF  NEWS

11^th July 2013

He may be a well-known artist and writer but these days he is preoccupied with dripping taps and the need to conserve water

Dear Mr. Aabid Surti, 

May we invite you to an online interview on your work in fixing Mumbai’s leaking pipes? This interview will be part of ADB’s water champion series. 

As brief background, our water champions are practitioners who introduce or implement water reforms. We invite them to discuss specific topics on the understanding that other policy and decision makers can learn a lot from their practical insights. Their views are written as interviews, published in ADB’s water website and e-newsletter, Water for All News, which goes to over 10,000 subscribers. 

Please find attached our questions to you as a water champion.  If you agree to this interview, please answer them in any manner comfortable to you, i.e. verbosely, briefly, etc.  Once we receive your written responses, we will reformat them into an online Q and A (about 600 to 800 words) and seek your approval for the final version. Some of the water champions we’ve featured in the past are 

Margaret Catley-Carlson: Willingness to Work with Others for Water 

Bindeshwar Pathak: Crusading for Human and Environmental Dignity 

Maria Lourdes Fernando: Keeping Marikina River in the Pink of Health 

We hope you can join them in our roster of ADB Water Champions. We plan to release the issue by the first week of May. As such, we will appreciate it very much if you can (a) let us know by return email if you agree to the interview by Friday, 19 April; and (b) send us your responses to the attached questions by Friday, 26 April. We would also need high resolution photos of you (profile and in action). 

We recognize your busy schedule and we apologize in advance for the short time frame.  We hope that you will agree to the interview and we look forward to hearing from you on the 19th or earlier. 

Thank you and best regards.

Cezar R. Tigno

Web Writer, Website Manager

Water for All Website

Asian Development Bank

www.adb.org/water

4^th Nov 2013

Asian Development Bank

Aabid Surti:

Helping to Fix Mumbai’s Water Supply

27^th April 2013

Author Aabid Surti champions water conservation by fixing leaks in Mumbai’s poor households, one pipe at a time.

Bothered by leaking taps at the houses of friends and relatives, Aabid Surti began knocking on neighbors’ doors, accompanied by a plumber, and asking if they have leaking pipes or taps that needed to be fixed. Surti is the founder of Drop Dead Foundation, a non-government organization (NGO) that fixes leaks every Sunday morning.

What inspired you to embark on such a big project as fixing Mumbai’s leaks?

My childhood years were spent in a chawl (a large building divided into many separate tenements, offering cheap, basic accommodation to labourers) and on pavement. To get a bucket full of water from the common tap, my mother had to stand in the queue early in the morning and often she had to fight for her right. This childhood memory kept on haunting me whenever I saw a leaking tap, overflowing building tank, or bursting pipeline.

How bad is Mumbai’s leak problem?

The leak problem in ghettos and lower middle class areas is worst. A plumber’s visit costs a minimum of Rs.100, which poor families cannot afford. Construction companies are also partly responsible for using substandard plumbing.

Tell us about Drop Dead. How does it work?

One Sunday in 2007, I hired a plumber and set out to fix leaking pipes or taps at my neighbors’ homes along Mira Road (Mumbai). I was bothered by a leaking tap at a friend’s house that remained unfixed because it was too minor and too costly. This was the birth of Drop Dead Foundation.

“The response to Drop Dead has been unbelievable. It’s picking up fast like jungle fire, not only in India but all over the globe.”

Since then, we have developed a process which we follow like clockwork. On Mondays, the plumber, a volunteer, and I approach the building secretary for permission. If the secretary agrees, then we put up a poster on the housing society’s notice board on the ground floor or near the lift, with our tagline “Save Every Drop or Drop Dead.” The words “Drop Dead” have a great impact on the tenants. On Saturdays, we send pamphlets that explain what Drop Dead is to every home, so when we arrive on Sunday morning, we get a warm welcome from the members of the housing society.

We cover a 6 story building in about 3 hours. We spend only 10 to 15 minutes travelling by car to reach a targetted building, but the rest of the time, we go house to house correcting leaky taps.

What are Drop Dead’s accomplishments so far?

I’ve kept the record of our first year, February 2007 to February 2008 — incidentally 2007 was the International Year of Water. During that period, we visited 1,666 houses on Mira Road, fixed 414 leaking taps free of charge, and saved about 4.14 lakh (414,000) liters of water.

What about financing? How are you able to sustain Drop Dead’s activities?

When you honestly set out to do good for others, the whole universe is there to back you. Not only that, God becomes your fund raiser. When my finances are about to dwindle, God pokes the right person and I receive a check without asking. This year, God poked Wipro which gave the Sparrow Award worth Rs.50, 000 to Drop Dead. Of course, contributions from anyone with no strings attached are always welcome.

How has your work in water with Drop Dead affected your creative work?

So far it has not interfered with my work in any way. But it has certainly inspired me to write a novel based on a fictitious river.

I’m giving my Sunday mornings for this cause. It’s so simple, so easy for anyone to do it. And that is what I want to convey to all, especially to senior citizens: come out of the retirement cocoon, spend a couple of hours, just do it. If I can, you can.

What are your plans for Drop Dead?

I’ve already started motivating children. The Cosmopolitan School of Mira Road and its staff members are committed to conserve water. Its 1000+ students are my angels who are carrying forward the message to save water by undertaking campaigns and putting up Drop Dead posters in their buildings.

What are the most important insights or lessons that you can share from your experience in Drop Dead and your work in water?

By working to save every drop, the pure love you get from door to door is indescribable. People are waiting to see an angel and to them, you are one.

The Water Champions series was developed to showcase individual leadership and initiative in implementing water sector reforms and good practices in Asia and the Pacific. The champions, representing ADB’s developing member countries, are directly involved in improving the water situation in their respective countries or communities. The series is regularly featured in ADB’s Water for All News, which covers water sector developments in the Asia and Pacific region.

Hello Mr. Surti,

It was a pleasure talking with you this evening. Thank you for your inspirational work on saving water in Mira Road with your NGO ‘Drop Dead’.

We have made supporting the environment our philosophy at The Fern, a national network of hotels & resorts. A brief profile of us & our work is attached.

We would like to invite you to speak with our guests & staff at our Powai hotel on the occasion of World Water Day, Friday, March 22. In addition, we would like to explore the possibility of continuing your work nationwide where we are present.

Please give me a day’s time to discuss the details internally. In the meantime, we would like to invite you to a meal at our Ahmedabad hotel, The Fern.

 

Regards,

Alan D’Mello
Brand Director

21^st Mar 2013