Mumbai Diary: Friday Dossier

It’s time to say good bhai: A woman picks out a rakhi from a shop at Borivali West on Thursday. Pic/Satej Shinde

A brush with nature

Did you know that our daily morning ritual of brushing teeth can generate up to 600 million kgs of plastic toothbrush waste every year? With an aim to remedy this alarming statistic, and inculcate a more sustainable approach among people, 16-year-old Navi Mumbai-based student Sara Kachhara (in pic), along with her friend Sunpreet Sawardekar, started The Bamboo Toothbrush Project. Conceptualised during her internship at the non-profit Urvari, the project led to the sale of 150 bamboo toothbrushes in a month. They used the proceeds to conduct a plantation drive and a food donation drive. "The pandemic helped me understand nature, consider every life as equal and empathise with animals. I took my first step towards paying back nature, with the #bambootoothbrushproject. We'd planned to sell 100 brushes, but eventually sold 150," she shared.

When a Bobby lands in Juhu

Juhu beach had a rather rare visitor recently, when a masked Bobby was stranded there. These are pelagic birds, meaning that they live almost entirely on water, which is what makes their sighting on land unusual. "It's only the females who come to the land for breeding. Otherwise they practically eat and sleep in water," explained Hrishikesh Rane, capacity building officer at Mangrove Foundation, which organised the rescue along with the state's forest department. He added that they sometimes get stranded on beaches because of unfavourable currents in the sea, which is what happened with the one at Juhu. "We took him to a nearby doctor who treated him, before we returned him to the spot where he was found and he started heading back to the water," Rane said. But before the bird returned to its natural habitat, a metal tag was fixed to its feet so that its migratory pattern could be tracked. "Every country has a nodal agency that people who find the bird next can contact, through a code in the tag. For India, that agency is Bombay Natural History Society," Rane told this diarist.

Planting a smart idea

While rakhis signify the love between a brother and sister, the actual product adds to global waste once discarded. That's why Chhatrapati Shivaji Vastu Sangrahalaya is now promoting the concept of seed rakhis. "These contain seeds of vegetables commonly found at home, like brinjal and mustard, and can be planted in show-box gardens in people's houses or out in the open once the festival is over," shared Meagan Vaz, education officer at CSMVS who will co-conduct a workshop today on how to create these eco-friendly rakhis.

Calling, wonder girls

With women increasingly shattering the glass ceiling in multiple walks of life, the Wonder Girls Student Leaders Fellowship aims to nurture adolescent girls into confident leaders of tomorrow. The online programme has been formulated by a council comprising prominent educators such as Dr Ranjini Krishnaswamy, director of Dosti foundation. Selected candidates will participate in live mentoring sessions with industry leaders including Radhika Piramal, vice-chairperson of VIP Industries. They will also attend networking sessions with other candidates from across the country. Head to wondergirls.academy for more details.

More power to Parukutty

Husband-wife duo Raghu and Pushpa Palat were recently in the news when their first book, The Case That Shook The Empire, was picked up by Karan Johar's production house. Now, the couple is back with their second title, also historical non-fiction, which is centred on Parukutty Neithyaramma, the consort of Maharaja Rama Varma XVI of Cochin who is Raghu's great-grandmother. "Being family, we had not even considered writing about her until we made a trip to Kerala to familiarise my younger daughter, Nikhila, with her roots. We visited the Dutch Palace and the Hill Palace where we were amazed that the authorities knew of Parukutty and spoke of her with such respect and awe. When we visited temples and met members of the erstwhile royal family, they too mentioned her with reverence and some fear. It's when the idea about writing about Parukutty emerged," recalls Pushpa. She adds that they were lucky to receive information from people who willingly shared documents, letters, videos and audio recordings. That Raghu was brought up and lived with Parukutty Neithyaramma till he was 15, helped translate and made the story more readable and relatable, she feels. The book, to be released by Penguin, is expected to hit shelves by next year.