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FAMILY 3: Anju Verma and mom Anju Verma is a student of Class VI at the Deepalaya School, Kalkaji, New Delhi. She lives with her parents and two younger brothers in a two-room apartment. Anju brings home all the tips she picks up at school. So, how green is her home? ANJU Q. What is environment? A. When I think of environment, I think of trees, waste or garbage, water, the air around us, people’s ignorance about pollution, and noise pollution. Q. While doing your routine work, going about everyday business, does anything in particular remind you of Environment? Or issues related to it? A. People throw a lot of garbage out on the roads here. If I see anyone doing so, I always tell him or her to not to do this, and that they should not use so much plastics. The people, who are educated, listen to me. They understand what I want to say. But, the ones that are not educated do not listen to me. They ignore everything. I think education is very important to save the environment. Q. What does ‘protecting or conserving environment’ mean to you? Have you done or changed anything at home to be more eco-friendly? A. I segregate waste in biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste. This is because biodegradable wastes get mixed into soil, while non-biodegradable wastes remain and become harmful for animals and us. Q. What inspires you to take ‘green’ steps? A. Whatever I do in school, I tell them to my parents. Whatever practices teachers tell me, I try to follow at home. This is all, as we do not have television at home. Q. Have you ever influenced your family members to adopt a practice or to take a decision that you felt would help protecting natural resources? Give us instances of successful attempts. A. Yes. I share all that I learn in school with my parents. My mother listens to me and takes a lot of interest. I tell her why we should do things this way, to save the environment. When my younger brother throws packets and wrappers here and there, I collect them. Q. Have you tried to spread awareness among your friends, in the residential colony you live in or elsewhere? A. Most of my friends are my schoolmates. So, they already know a lot. 
MOTHER Q. Your daughter has told us about the “green steps”. What made you listen to her? A. She keeps on telling me things like segregating waste and closing the tap and switching off the lights and I listen to her. Well, because she is my daughter and also because she is more educated than I am. If she does something wrong, we, as parents, always tell her to do the right thing. So, if we do something wrong, she tells us to do the right thing, and we listen to it. Q. Do you think you have done the right thing? A. She is more educated than me. So, I’m sure that it is the right thing. Q. Do you think you would have known the environmental impact of your decision unless she had pointed it out to you? A. No. Besides her I have no other person who can tell me about environment. Q. Do you want to tell your friends or neighbours about the steps and the reasons behind them? A. I tell my neighbours about the things that Anju tells me to do. Some listen to me, and some ignore them. But, most of them agree. Her father also eagerly does the things that she tells us to do. FAMILY 4 Akash and Pavan Jaini and mom Pavan and Akash Jaini are two brothers – one 9 years old and the other 11 years old. Both study at the Shri Ram School, Aravalli, Gurgaon, Haryana, and stay in a well-appointed apartment in Garden Estate, Gurgaon. Their mother teaches in the same school, and their father is a professional paragliding pilot who trains armed forces. This is a family of animal lovers, which believes in doing something for the environment differently, innovatively. PAVAN AND AKASH Q. What is environment? A. Environment is our surrounding. There are trees and plants, animals, water, electricity, car, petrol, gas… everything. Q. While doing your routine work, going about everyday business, does anything in particular remind you of Environment? Or issues related to it? A. The Yamuna is so dirty now, and even the Ganga. We go rafting quite often. The Ganga changes completely as it flows from the place where we raft, to other cities. People are building hotels and apartments on the riverbeds. How can they? We used to camp near the Rajaji National Park, Uttarakhand, on the side close to the road. Earlier, we used to see animals, like deer and leopards, come there and drink water. Now somebody has put a rafting camp there. So, animals have nowhere else to go. The environmentalists tried to convince the government to stop these people, but nothing happened. 
Q. What does ‘protecting or conserving environment’ mean to you? Have you done or changed anything at home to be more eco-friendly? A. We plant trees downstairs and keep plants in our house. Q. What inspires you to take ‘green’ steps? A. Our main influence is our school and our GEEK (Garden Estate Environment for Kids) club. Sometimes, we see programmes or films on television. Q. Have you tried to spread awareness among your friends, in the residential colony you live in or elsewhere? A. Most of my friends are eco-friendly because they are either in my school or my colony. For instance, the DLF Corporate Park, the office complex that is close to our colony has a pipe, which always leaks into a small lake. The lake used to be very pretty, but now its water is completely black. Nobody goes near it now. We are trying to write letters to the building authorities to try to fix the problem. Earlier, we could see a lot of lizards, snakes. But, now they are all gone. MOTHER Q. Have your kids ever influenced you to adopt ‘green’ practice or take a ‘green’ decision? A. We have not burnt a single cracker for the last 2-3 years. We really did not think that children, who are so fond bursting crackers, would manage to make a colony almost quite. People would just wonder if Diwali is even on in the area. That is how powerful a tool a child is. There is another thing that Akash said to me last year, which has stayed with me. During festivals, we get mithai and various gifts that we keep on exchanging. He said to me “Mamma, this is so much of waste. Is this of any use?” This really made me stop and think. My husband and I called all our friends and told them that we were really grateful for the gifts that they have sent us, but we were not giving them anything in return. Instead, we would donate the entire amount we had set aside to buy gifts for the members of a home run by a charitable trust. Last year, I advised my friends to do the same. Recently, Pavan won an under-9 squash championship. He donated his prize money to the Bihar flood victims. Even Akash did the same. Also, we gift plants. This Diwali, my husband’s elder brother gave CFLs as gifts. The thing is that one has to start thinking differently to bring about a change. Q. Your sons have told us about the “green steps”. What made you listen to them? A. Well, we all are involved with the environmental activities in our own ways. I love animals. I used to work in the Blue Cross Society, Pune, which is like the Friendicoes in Delhi. Since I was a child, I used pick up puppies and bring them home. Once, I even got a baby donkey home. So, when my kids do something like this, I don’t panic. I try to arrange a shelter or a home for them. Their father is an avid trekker. So, he is conscious about these issues as well. His elder brother is into solar cooking. He has done a lot of demonstrations in slum and rural areas. He set up a first-of-its-kind solar cooking unit in his in-laws house. They have set the kitchen in such a way that the solar cooker is paced in a tray-like thing, which can be just pushed out in the sun from the window. Once the food is cooked, the tray is pulled back again. In our family, kids have learnt to live using as little resource as possible, naturally. It’s the only way we know. So it’s not about grand, sweeping gestures, but about little everyday things. Taking the bus or the metro instead of the car or using a bucket of water to bathe rather than turning on the shower full throttle. In the giant task of taking care of Planet Earth, these baby steps are the best way to begin. And these young campaigners even manage to have a lot of fun while doing the ‘right’ thing. Oh yes, grown-ups have a lot to learn from them. And a very long way to go. |
