गोइंग ग्रीन!

So what do you usually do on your Sunday mornings? Let me guess…get up as late as you can…sip on a hot ’n creamy cup of coffee munching on savories spiced up with Sunday Times(Yeah Sunday Times is a part of Sunday breakfast, isn’t it?) lazing around in the balcony…enjoying anticipative aromas of your Sunday special feast ‘in the making’ swaying from the kitchen...and by the time your mom/roommate/wife persuades you to finally go for your long lasting cozy bath, you realize the clock has already struck 12 noon where in you’re late even to catch a matinee! Half of ‘The’ day you had waited eagerly for, killing an entire tiring working week is over. Gone. And what have you done? Practically nothing! Isn’t this more or less similar in your case? With little variation as per our marital/financial/habitual status we end up ‘wasting’ our precious Sunday mornings…But not everyone does this you know. At least the members of Vasundhara have been doing something really incredible since past 90 odd Sundays by spending just 2 hours in totality! They are going green…

Continuous Contour Trenching is the best proven technique that has been successfully executed throughout major water harvesting and forestation projects, especially in the Indian sub-continent. It involves slashing the mountain to mark 2 feet wide contour trenches along the object hill in concentric circles and parallel to each other and to the ground from Top-To-Bottom with the only glitch being these contours should have no slopes. That’s IT. This simple paradigm has the potential to sustain forests, conserve the fertile layers of soil, and harvest most precious nectar of nature… rainwater! The rainwater otherwise descends with full gravitational pull scraping all the possible earth and leaving behind eroded rocky mountain which turns impotent to conceive further foliage. Hundreds and thousands of such hillocks and mountains have thus been robbed off their vegetation and within no time the rainy clouds wagon also ceases to stop by them. Lands over lands enter this vicious circle awaiting draughts lingering right around the corner. CCT impedes this treacherous flow of rainwater and forces it to get absorbed in the soil in trench. The water which escapes one contour gets trapped by the next and so on. As the end result, the rainwater which falls on the mountain is retained by the mountain and is consumed by the forestation or drips through the rocky layer to rise levels of under ground water. What can be better than this? CCT has thus resurrected hundreds of deserted villages in rural western Maharashtra and set them ‘tanker free’!

The PANCARD hills surrounding Baner locality are good for nothing. Seasonal grass paints them green in monsoon for a change however otherwise they lay hopeless with hay and thorny shrubs. Bunch of environment freaks set out to do something about mother earth in a scale that is reasonable, manageable and affordable. Pune Municipality encouraged them by providing them with 2 thousand free saplings. The objective is to work towards a clean and green environment. The task force is no full time dedicated social workers but civilians with regular jobs, responsibilities and liabilities, motives and excuses. The timelines are 2 hours on Sunday mornings. The plan is to get together, dig the contours, plant the saplings, water them, breathe fresh air, and to be happy about having planted and sustained at least a tree. Who all come? Doctors, IT pro’s, managers, drivers, baner natives, senior citizens, school children, college youth, agricultural experts, agriculturally challenged one’s like me, a patrol pump owner comes, bachelors, families…anyone and everyone. Yet, we still have dearth of people at times! This has been happening since last 90 weeks and will continue till the saplings grow out of their infantry so that their roots are strong enough to survive by themselves. One day not very far from now the PANCARD hills will majestically flaunt its flora. Neems will purify air…Flame of forests will blossom saffron…Jamuns will reap syrupy fruits…Shady Banyans will break into the rocky summit to grow old and tell the tale of simple effort by simple people.

2 Hours on a Sunday morning for your own environment। Is it really too much to ask for?
-- Pradnya Joshi
P.S. Kindly get in touch with me in case you're a puneiite n want to make most of your sunday mornings!