Mira Road’s water warrior

Every Sunday afternoon, Aabid Surti, goes door-to-door, to check for water leakages in the households of Mira Road. If he finds leakages, he fixes them right then, free of cost

Every Sunday afternoon, Aabid Surti, goes door-to-door, to check for water leakages in the households of Mira Road. If he finds leakages, he fixes them right then, free of cost.

Aabid Surti.

Surti, who is now in his early seventies, started a one-man non-governmental organisation called Drop Dead Foundation in 2007. “It was during a visit to my friend’s house, that I noticed a leaking faucet. The leak bothered me so much that I made up my mind to do something about it,” said Surti.

Every year, Surti, accompanied by a plumber and a volunteer, visits about 1,600 homes, out of which, more than 400 have water leaks. “Fixing leakages is neither expensive nor time consuming, yet they go unfixed,” Surti pointed out.

According to him, people are aware about the wastage caused by leakages, but are too lazy to call a plumber to fix one small problem.

Surti has spent most of his childhood on a roadside pavement watching people fight tooth and nail over a bucket of water. “My mother used to wake up early in the morning and wait in a queue so that she could get a bucket full of water for the day,” he said.

He wants the coming generations to be more sensitive towards the problem of water wastage. He has inspired many people to join his initiative. Recently, a group of students from Sultanpur read Surti’s work and invited him to deliver a lecture.

“People talk about saving the Ganga. Why can’t they start by saving water, drop by drop in their own households,” said Surti.