Upala KBR (DNA; June 6, 2017)

Actress-filmmaker Pooja Bhatt with lawyer Afroz Shah and thousands of volunteers have been responsible for cleaning 160,000 kgs (160 Tons) of garbage from Versova beach. Pooja recalls, “Afroz and I go back many years. Initially, he didn’t tell anybody that he was doing this. When I first went to Versova beach and I consider myself an optimist, it was a physical blow to me! I was like — what have we done to our surroundings?”

The big change
Pooja says, “I learned from Afroz that it’s too easy to blame others. We worked silently for the first 50 weeks but it was only when the Patron of the Oceans Lewis Pugh, British endurance swimmer and ocean advocate came to Mumbai to clean the beach that the city and everyone else woke up and said ‘A white man is cleaning our beach.’ Then Head of UN Environment Erik Soleheim came and put his might behind us. The PM Hon’ble Narendra Modi also acknowledged our journey and now after 87 weeks, it’s been a mad rush for everyone to jump into the fray and get a piece of the pie.

Thousand flamingos!
She continues, “Four days ago, Randeep Hooda, Afroz and I took a boat from Lokhandwala creek to Malad where the garbage was coming from and that was another horrifying sight to see. Right behind Lokhandwala is a huge creek which could have been a tourist site for fishing, picnic, boating etc as we could reclaim our public places but when you go down the creek it’s black, dirty water and from there a radius of 10 km Bollywood people stay. We tell lies and spin lies and shoot in pristine locations but don’t look at the filth right under our noses. We saw over a 1000 pink flamingos as we ferried across the creek and saw the upstream mangrove forest choked with plastic. It was heartbreaking to see the birds skimming for marine life and getting plastic instead.”

Be responsible
She feels that Mumbai needs to dispose waste responsibly. “We have become a nation of blamers — kyun hota hai? We don’t realise that we are part of the problem. As long our aangans and homes are clean we are fine. Each of us has to protect the environment. It is too easy to blame the BMC or government but why don’t we take responsibility ourselves? Let anyone come and take credit but eventually we have formed a community of people. I was not part of that before. People of all caste, religion and economic strata — bonding and working together, sharing each other’s thoughts is fantastic! We have one thought — we have taken so much from the world but now it is time to give back. We have a plastic landfill for segregation, but our eventual aim is to convert this into fuel. We have planted coconut trees across the beach.”

Next is Bandra
“I want to bring to Chimbai beach in Bandra (known to be the most polluted beach in Mumbai) the same change we have brought to Versova beach. I am a Bandra girl but have never been to Chimbai beach. I want to replicate that model for sure and we need to give the community a sense of belonging and ownership.”