Greatest Gift to Mother Nature and Mankind

Are you a giver or a receiver? Do you enjoy being a consistent and a selfless giver? With the passing years, I have gravitated more towards giving than receiving. The real motivation behind the change is my belief that the accumulation of extraneous items would not give me joy. When on the path of giving to the community, I often find myself inconsistent irrespective of the domain knowledge sharing, financial help, etc. To solve my query, I recently interviewed an environmental activist, Seema Khandale, a.k.a 'CupWoman' who founded an NGO 'Ashay Social Group' in 2015. Despite much recognition and laurels under her belt, this student of botany with a master's in social work comes across as a very sweet and humble person. While reading about her, I thought I had found the right person who will help me crack the code. With her heart of gold and a patient hearing, she not only solved all my dilemmas but gave me many more insights. Stay along to find the life lessons I learned from my interview with her.

1. Find the right friends/ecosystem - Post her masters from IGNOU, Seema was on the lookout for her next career step. She knew she wanted to do something for the environment and society. It was only after the lucky encounter with her friend's project on making and giving away cloth bags as an alternative to plastics, she knew she had found her calling. With the help of her family and friends, she started an NGO under which she would collect used sarees, dupattas, blouses, etc. and employ lady tailors to stitch them into wonderful and creative bags. Her model of operation was hugely inspired by her friends and employed the same set of women workers. She considers her friend, a guru (a teacher) who showed her the right path. And when she put out the request for saree donation, another friend of hers was the first one to donate 20 odd sarees. After 4.5 years, filled with 28,000 cloth bag donations and hundreds of awareness sessions on 'Say NO to Plastics' many reaches out to her to get their stock of cloth bags.

For day-to-day shopping, social ceremonies such as 'Haldi Kumkum' or for their flea market selling, her friends and neighbors have changed their preference to cloth bags. Amongst numbers and recognitions, she gets the greatest satisfaction in knowing that she plays a critical role in saving 24-25 plastic bags per month per every person she encounters.

My biggest takeaway has to be -

"Anything is possible when you have the right friends to support and inspire you."

2. Facelift your mission- Stalwart and my idol, Mrs. Sudha Murthy, excelled at multiple careers in her lifetime and to date continues to work as an Infosys Foundation's Chairwoman and a prolific writer. I have always wondered how she manages to do multiple things along with her responsibilities as a wife and a mother. Seema is no different and even though she started with a 3R project, within a year went on to add more projects to her kitty. After talking to Seema, my understanding states that you have to keep reinventing parts of your mission to keep it going. As a regular user of the menstrual cups, Seema found its benefits appealing to herself and the environment. Her socio-environmental mind kicked in and thought what if more women start using it.

Over the menstrual lifecycle of a woman, the calculation showed that by using a menstrual cup instead of a disposable plastic-based sanitary napkin, she saves 6,000 pads from going to the landfill. These mind-boggling numbers inspired Seema to use her voice and spread awareness amongst all statures of the society starting from schools, colleges, maids, Anganwadi workers, to corporate offices, hospitals, and more. Her frequent interactions with the users helped her understand their pain points. The biggest one being the expensiveness of existing retail products. To overcome this issue, she self-designed the menstrual cup "RUTU" in 2017. Cut to today and Ashay has 1900+ RUTU subscribers spread across India. I am reminded of the quote by Mrs. Sudha Murthy, whose words are brought to reality by Seema's work and vision.

"Vision without action is merely a dream; action without vision is merely passing time, but vision and action together can change the world."

3. Fight for one and all- If you ask me what is the major commonality between Seema and women leaders such as Sudha M. or Elaben B.? I would point out their work for disadvantaged groups in society. When an Anganwadi worker could not afford the "RUTU" cup for her chums, Seema found an alternative in clean cloth pads. My memories from the movie "Padman", forced me to ask whether it was safe to use a cloth pad. Being her patient self, Seema explained that even Akshay's character, Lakshmikant, in the movie suggests refrainment in the usage of unclean cloth and not the cloth itself. Seema's work involves sharing awareness about the material and dimension of cloth pad, its usage, and maintenance (i.e. washing and drying). Like Padman, our Cupwoman travels in and around Mumbai to spread her message without any expectation of getting back. I loved how she described her work as "This is just giving back to the society in a small manner (sic)"

While sharing her message or spreading awareness, Seema chooses laywoman language that anyone and everyone can understand. For instance, when asked to explain sustainability, she responded that our relationship with mother earth should be similar to that with a friend, the one where we make intentional efforts and intend not to break it. It was an honor to meet a person who is regularly gifting the sustainability lessons to people around her. I would like to end with a quote by Gaur Gopal Das which resonates a lot with Seema's personality.

"Takers can eat well, but givers can sleep well. Takers can have a great time, but givers can have a great life."