Aabid Surti

Aabid Surti, a national award winner with over 80 books to his credit, is a well-known water activist who almost single-handedly has saved over 20 million liters of water. Having earned global recognition for his work, Surti had a prosperous and satisfactory life. But something bothered him perennially – the thought of water being wasted. Coming from a family with members standing in queues for hours for a trifle of water, Surti understood the importance of water from childhood. Brought up on the pavement, watching people fight for every bucket of water, he grew up to comprehend the value of every single drop of water. Consequently, it piqued him to see even a drop of water being wasted. As he says, the sound of water leakage used to bother him every time. He read a newspaper article in 2007 that explained that a tap that dripped once every second would lead to the wastage of over 1000 liters of water a month. This article hit him like a wall, and he became aware of the severity of the looming global water crisis. He decided to save water in whatever little capacity he could. This marks the birth of the Drop Dead Foundation (DDF), which uses the tagline, "save every drop, or drop dead". DDF is a non-governmental organization (NGO) that fixes leaking taps in residential houses in Mumbai, free of charge. Every Sunday, the Drop Dead team fixes leakages in apartments on Mira Road in the city. Every week they target a building, and on the first day of the week, they meet the secretary and explain their purpose. After his permission, they put posters that read 'Save Every Drop or Drop Dead' on the notice board. On Saturday, their pamphlets giving out all the details reach every house in the building. Finally, they start from the top floor on Sunday, knocking on every door and fixing faucets. The foundation primarily checks for leakages in lower-middle-class family households, called "ghettos". The residents are either too poor to pay for plumbing and maintenance regularly or would not care. Here, Surti and his foundation reach to fix leakages without any cost. In the past ten years, Drop Dead Foundation has visited more than 10,000 households and has repaired more than 5500 leaking taps saving more than 20 Million liters of water from going down the drains. Surti has come across many financial challenges in his journey, but nothing could stop him from achieving his goal. He firmly believes that God becomes one's fundraiser if one does something with complete transparency. Every time he needed money to keep Drop Dead Foundation running, God helped him. Help came in the form of actor Amitabh Bachchan who gave him Rs. 11 lakh; the Maharashtra government helped him with an award of Rs. 50,000, a plumber who worked with him for free, and many other similar instances. Surti says he is moving a step forward by motivating school children to conserve water by talking about prospects. He has already partnered with two premier schools in Mumbai to propagate the message of water conservation. He considers the students as angels carrying forward the message to save water by undertaking campaigns and putting up water conservation posters in their buildings. This 84-year-old artist and writer are one of our water heroes who took the unwavering commitment to make water-saving changes in his community, one tap at a time.