Our last SEEF event for the year 2022

 

SJIHS & Loyola College were our last group for the year 2022

A 70 strong contingent was our last event for the year 2022. So we went out with a bang. Plus we had the principal of SJBHS and the VP Brian McKertish also present for the final event. I like the fact that the schools ask for the kids to come in uniform. Then we can keep an eye on them when they wander across the farm looking curiously at plants and trees.

Greg walks around showing the kids the trees along the way to the RWH installation

For both Greg and me working with the next generation brings a lot of fulfillment for us. Our older boys do not live in the country, so this is our way of giving back to society. Making kids understand the importance of sustainable living if they are to maintain their planet for the future.

I have been trained by UNEP, UNFCCC, UN Water UNDEP among other arms of the UN teaching sustainable living to journalists. All over the world we were taken to learn hands on so we wrote with knowledge and conviction. For years I have taught young journalists how to be sustainable and write with conviction if they are to make a change.

Amazing concentration and note taking through the sessions!

We dont have enough benches so mats on the floor are fine and the kids are quite adjusting to a rural setting in Hoskote. SEEF’s mantra is that SJBHS kids teach the visitors. For the last three years we have taught the SJBHS kids online and through zoom sessions. Now they have been empowered to take a leadership role and teach  the visitors. Of Course we are there to ensure the whole process is scientific and correct.

The menstrual hygiene session had the girls listening in, rapt attention  

For me being a woman from a very forward thinking family it was shocking to listen to many of the girls voice archaic rules that their grandmothers and mothers foisted on them in the session. Girls who are made to sleep on the floor, cannot enter the kitchen or the temple. They are considered unclean. Shocking stories in the 21st century!

I had a Dad who came to me when I matured to say in New Delhi, that in the South of India, a girl is feted and there is rejoicing when she matures. Go and race and jump, you are not sick. His positive support was such an amazing foundation for me to  never stop through all my cycles and finally have my sons with the minimum of fuss.

With these sessions we are teaching tomorrow's mothers and fathers to throw out old and obsolete ideas and customs and go with science to  love and support their daughters.

Look at the excitement to show her peers that nothing is dirty in handling wet waste

With gloves on and boots we ask which kids would like to jump in and there is a fight to show off their skills! Wet waste if composted at source can bring down the stink in our cities. If we realise WE are the ones to segregate our waste and clean up our city instead of blaming the government, it would change our lives and our cities.

Fr Sunil the principal of SJBHS speaks to the 70 strong gathering.

Beautiful Custard apple Balnagar grafts were put down by the kids!

Naveen brings only fruit from Safal for the kids to mix in the wet waste pit.

The evolution of the Puttenahalli lake !

 

Shocking view of the lake in 2009                         

Several years ago I decided to write about the Puttenahalli Lake JP Nagar 7th Phase, South Bangalore after an acquaintance wrote to me while I was working in the Deccan Herald. They had started doing some work on rejuvenating the lake and this was the year 2006. They tried hard but as usual there was the dirty underbelly of Bangalore who did not care and a lot of building debris continued to be offloaded on the lake bed in the dead of night.  As you can see in the picture it had become a cess pool of garbage and raw sewage effluents released untreated into the lake.

When the lady contacted me she said that it was a group of concerned citizens under the banner of PNLIT who had taken the onus of rejuvenating the lake. Well before all the flooding thats happening in Bangalore. The lake clean up was managed with funding in the group and they held several events to showcase the flora and fauna of the lake. 

The following are some of the trees and plants that grow around the Puttenahalli Lake

• Mahogany
• Cadamba
• Portia tree
• Singapore cherry
• Paradise tree
• Gmelina arborea
• Badminton-ball tree
• Pterygota alata (Buddha coconut)

 

The lake in 2011 with ongoing work

A lot of work carried on from 2009 with tree planting etc and I remember writing a story about the first  Blue Heron sighting on the lake and it generated so much excitement in the group-- you can read my stories in the Hindu below--

https://www.puttenahallilake.in/media-coverage/a-lake-revived

https://www.puttenahallilake.in/media-coverage/return-of-the-native

The work has never stopped and I get regular yearly updates on how the lake is doing from the President Usha R. Makes me fell so good that they have never given up and it probably stood them in good stead with the flooding happening in Bangalore. Smart people!

The transformation in 2022!

It's such an amazing transformation! Look at the first picture and then look at this picture! Makes one's heart swell with the fact that there ARE people who want to help and support whats going on with keeping the lake clean and healthy. Its an ecosystem we need to maintain  and builders need to be fined heavily if they let raw sewage into the lake. Lets use our common sense. That sewage percolates down into the water table and we will pump that polluted water up to drink!

My stories!

I was working on a freelance basis with The Hindu and I knew that saving the lakes of Bangalore was the ONLY way the city could save our water table and be a great means of RWH ( Rain Water Harvesting). Slowly over time, not only was the lake revived by the group, BUT,  I wrote about the first spectacular Purple Heron that had visited the lake after decades.

  
https://www.indiawaterportal.org/news/lake-revived-purple-heron-visits-restored-puttenahalli-lake-bangalore-article-hindu

Click and read about the Purple Heron!

 

And then again I wrote about the beautiful Garganey ducks which had come from Europe to winter in the lake. The birders of the city were ecstatic and the PNLIT group were absolutely thrilled.

 

https://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/ducking-it/article2674839.ece

Click and read about the Garganey Ducks

Bella Vista our farm in Hoskote -- a 25 year project in sustainability.

 

                  Hoskote as it was when we bought it 25 years ago

Over 25 years ago my eldest son David went for French tuitions to an Anglo Indian teacher named Miss Davenport. He took French as his second language in his ISC as he wanted to score well which Kannada would not help him to do. During the class the teacher said to all the students -- my relative wants to sell a 2 acre piece of land in Hoskote so if anyone is interested please call me. David pricked up his ears as he knew his mother was crazy about wanting a plot of land to grow all the trees her heart desired. The phone rang and Miss Davenport said Mrs de Nazareth? My heart sank as I wondered what David had been up to. Gingerly I asked -- Yes Miss Davenport? Expecting a barrage of David's misdemeanours which I was used to!

Oh I have a piece of land in Hoskote belonging to Miss Barbra Webster and we want to sell it. David says you would be interested.

My heart stopped beating. Of course I wanted to buy it. And in typical Marianne, impulsive fashion I agreed to her price on the phone without seeing the land.

The first time we saw it was when we went to register it with Dads lawyers --  DaCosta and DaCosta! We registered the sale, money changed hands and we drove down to the property. When I saw it my heart sank. Tears stood in my eyes with shock. Look at the picture above. It was just a waste piece of land -- karaab to the core.

No point getting upset I thought in my usual gungho style. And we ate their cucumber sandwiches and drank their delicious coffee and went home. My heart was in my feet and I wondered what we could do with the great idea of a farm that had swallowed all my savings of one lakh.

Another view of the horrible piece of land I bought!

It had eucalyptus trees planted by the owners to prevent squatters but it was an arid, horrible piece of land, which sloped from right to left with a lot of its top soil eroded. To stop further erosion I decided to buy a truck load of granite stones and along with my sons David and Andrew ( Steve was too tiny) and my husband Gregory, we built a check dam, which you can see us standing on to stop further erosion. It was just a gut feel decision, as I had not had my UN training on sustainability at the time.

Then there was no money left to do any more and I left it alone for over a decade.  Maybe more than a decade till the boys grew up. However I HAD to forcibly step in and enclose the place when a whole swimming pool of the lovely red soil was robbed by thieves every night and being sold to gardeners in Bangalore. There is always a God that steps in to help and a convent in KR Puram was upgrading their walls and so gave me their chapdi kals at a reasonable rate. We transported the stones to Hoskote and began the labour of enclosing the 2 acres. The final icing on the cake was my buying the old convent gate which had a lot of strength left in it!

 The farm today is a paradise of 25 years of work.

The villagers refused to let us enclose the property. No one encloses their land here and how will we go from the front to the back they demanded. So forcibly they made us give up 10 ft by 2 acres all along the property for a road. So we enclosed the front and the back and the sides we bought kucchas and barbed wire and enclosed the whole property. One corner I had no stone so I planted bamboo which is a wonderful hedge once it grows.

Then began the laborious process of employing a man and digging a bore well. Dad stood with my husband Greg one night, while the bore was dug and we hit water at 300 feet. I had to be at home with the babies. We were set now-- or so we thought. In no time all the farmers were digging bores and the bore dried up. So we had to buy tankers of water to look after the graft mango and chickoo trees I had bought from Lalbagh. Dad was clear, be scientific and educated-- buy only graft fruit trees.

Hundreds of chickoos too!

Twenty five years later I am so glad and happy that I listened to him. All the fruit trees give heaps of fruit and we get a steady supply of chickoos, mangoes, avocados, Jamuns, custard apples, Ramphals, Amlas, and massive Jack fruit. 

However water is a huge issue, so we Rain Water Harvest aggressively in both a big RWH pit and also in injection wells which I had put down 20 years ago. These wells have brought up the water table so high with the excess rain, that both the bore wells are working and the entire farm is green and happy.

  The rain has brought us a HUGE crop of Ramphals this year.

  Not only are the farm workers happy, we also are really happy that we are back in the farm and enjoying the fruit of 25 years of money well spent.