There was an uneasy calm in the shade of an old Palash tree as I entered the driveway of Abhay Chawla’s house in Gurgaon.
The smell of burning leaves a couple of blocks away would have gone unnoticed but for Chawla this was another signal to launch another small but significant mission in his lifelong crusade.
He quickly grabbed a bottle of water from his refrigerator and rushed to the site of the burning leaves. The fire put out, it was time to find the culprit. A few inquires later he zeroes in on him. The small lecture on pollution that followed was not welcome and became an ego issue for the house owner. A timely retreat stopped the situation from turning ugly but Chawla says he’ll return to try and get his point across.
An engineer, Abhay Chawla, graduated from the Institute of Technology at Banaras Hindu University and worked with a number of firms before he decided to retire early some eight years ago and take up his passion fulltime.
Along with a handful of dedicated volunteers from the corporate sector, Abhay Chawla is trying to educate the educated to improve the environment.
He explains how we all can keep our environment clean by making simple yet effective changes to our lifestyles like using bio-degradable products in our daily life. Switching to paper plates instead of plastic ones or carrying a cloth bag every time we go to the market.
Some six years ago Chawla started a movement called ‘say no to polybags’ that involved school and college students. The movement caught on and today it has 30,000 supporters.
Last year the group celebrated Earth Day by planting trees around the lake at Sukrali to underline the fact that water is precious.
For Chawla, greening the earth begins at home. He has started a small nursery in his home and nurtures saplings of neem and peepal trees and then plants them in public places like parks and green belts.
And with children as his most loyal followers, Chawla’s mission looks all set to go forward.