AQI 15 in Delhi! Meet the Sainik Farms couple that knows how to keep the air clean and cool all round the year
Delhiites, urban farmers Peter Singh and Neeno Kaur practice sustainable living through aquaponics. Their quest for clean air began after Kaur got leukemia.
When all eyes are on the headlines, waiting for at least some improvement in Delhi's AQI and subsequent easing of GRAP restrictions, a married couple in south Delhi’s Sainik Farms remain far from any worry. Reason? Delhiites Peter Singh and Neeno Kaur have developed a highly self-sufficient and sustainable way of living with ‘good’ AQI, which is often recorded at 15 in their house!
Using aquaponics — a method of farming that uses water from fish tanks to irrigate plants — this couple that calls themselves urban farmers, grows around 15,000 plants at their home's rooftop. “We have a big cool panel at the entrance to our home and green house, which has water trickling through it. An exhaust fan pulls in the air, which is cleaned and naturally filtered by removing the pollutants and is also cooled. This air circulates through the green house, where the plants oxygenate it, and thus the then clean oxygenated air with PM 2.5=5 and PM 10=10 flows through our house,” informs Singh (80), a PhD in Topology in Mathematics from Delhi University’s St Stephen’s College. He adds, “Air quality can be improved in an economical way, and not just large homes but even in flats or a small house you can have a balcony model to grow at least 500 plants and filter the air that enters your home.”
A flashback to their life reveals how their journey towards a sustainable future began when Kaur was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (a type of blood cancer) in 1998. “Eventually after a bone marrow transplant in the UK in 2009, I was cured of the CLL but upon coming back to Delhi in 2010, my lungs got impacted even though Delhi air wasn’t so bad then,” recalls 70-year-old Kaur. Her grit to defeat the disease and loving support of her husband is till date helping her to nurture not just the plants but even their “passion for growing the food we eat”.
“We now hold two-week long online courses to share with others the knowledge of how to live a sustainable life. Peter talks about aquaponics and I teach the techniques of growing vegetables, herbs, fruits using aquaponics. In these courses, I also talk about managing the kitchen and garden waste by composting it, so that no waste leaves our home,” shares Kaur, and Singh adds, “The sweeper in our colony was at one point surprised and said ‘Apke ghar se toh kooda hi nahin nikalta’. I then showed him what we do. He said, ‘If everyone does this, our lives would improve’. Now, he collects the leaves from the colony and instead of burning it gives it to us, to be added to the compost we make.”
Not just this, in their penchant to give back to the society, the couple has also been maintaining a robust rain water harvesting system in their colony, which has improved the ground water level in their neighbourhood! Singh says he's now busy with research and implementation of solar panels in his home in Delhi as well as Goa; where the two have a similar set-up for sustainable living. Singh adds, “We cut forests and live in concrete jungles using ACs that cool the air inside but throw it out… Let's not look at the government. If it's our waste, we should mange it! We are urban farmers. We are healthy, happy and require no medication. If we can manage living without harming the environment then so can everyone else. Let us be the change we want to see.”
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