Some ideas snowball into projects so quickly that it surprises everybody. Anand Awadhani, Managing Director of Unique Features, a renowned author and journalist and I visited Rain Water Harvesting Model at the Bhandup Factory of Asian Paints together. [Incidentally, it is open for public and many persons from housing societies as well as school children have already visited it. Asian Paints offers free advice to people who want to set up rain water harvesting in their establishments]. Awadhani was so excited after seeing the model that he insisted on finding ways to take this to people in various and novel ways. We left the Bhandup Factory to visit Awadhani’s friend but the discussion did not move away from rain water harvesting and the related subjects. His enthusiasm was very infectious.

Net result: Both of us decided to work on it and Asian Paints readily agreed to participate. Anand Awadhani and his team commenced work immediately and have produced a very informative booklet in a short time.

January 7 saw culmination of our efforts. In a function that was held in the Scientific Hall at Nagpur the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Commissioner published a booklet on water management in three languages: English, Hindi and Marathi. Ten thousand copies will be distributed free to students at Nagpur.

Mr. PM Murty, MD and CEO of Asian Paints stressed the importance of the initiative and suggested that the company will set up a rain water harvesting model for the benefit of Nagpur students and residents if the municipality allots a small space available. After all, seeing is believing!

Ms Archana Dehankar, the Mayor of Nagpur said that Asian Paints and Unique Features have actually done what the municipality should have done and expressed great appreciation of the work. She readily agreed to make the space available so the second leg of the project will soon get going!

Dr. Aseem Gupta, Commissioner also spoke on this occasion, appreciating the socially relevant and important project and mentioned that the data provided in the booklets was authentic.

Mr. Manish Choksi, Chief Corporate Strategy and CIO of the company thanked the dignitaries. This project would not have been possible without the support of Manish Choksi.

I suggested that we should repeat this effort in another city, and everybody agreed. Where should we head next? What do you think? Solapur? Pune? Kolhapur? Let us await the announcement.

For me a project that started before my retirement was completed so well. That gives some more memorable moments in my association with Asian Paints.

Vivek