RAJKOT: “There is no light in my eyes but I have the spark that can ignite the life of our next generation.” Meet 60-year-old Mahendrasinh Zala of Rajkot who hooked a curveball that life threw at him right out of his boundary, and how.
While he had to hang his boots early on from his government job after losing 90 percent of his eyesight, Zala did not lose his vision — of mitigating the annual water scarcity problems he faced.
And so, instead of sitting idle despairing about his disability, the retired man started a water harvesting project at his Kothariya colony house in Rajkot. The success that this sexagenarian met in his venture was enough to fetch him the Jalshakti department’s coveted award — the ‘water hero’. Today, Zala harvests around 1 lakh litre of water every monsoon.
I am doing it for our future generation. People usually save money for their children, but I am saving water,” Zala told TOI.
Zala had suffered serious injuries in both eyes in 1992 while playing volleyball. Suffering from retina detachment, the mechanical engineer slowly lost his vision. He was working as a supervising instructor with an ITI and ultimately when he was robbed of eyesight, purblind Zala opted for VRS in 2013.
Zala challenged himself to train his ability toward water harvesting activity and after a lot of struggle created seven different types of tanks on his two terraces. Zala’s brother Gajendrasinh, who lives in the adjacent house, helped his sibling connect all the tanks with pipelines and also put a net in the pipe to filter the dust and garbage that come with rainwater from the terrace.
Zala stores 12,000 litres of water in these tanks and whatever overflows from the tank goes directly underground through the network of pipes. “If we don’t harvest water right now, in the future there won’t be enough water to drink and humans will be forced to drink their tears,” he warned.
“I harvest 1 lakh litre of water in my 200-yard lawn outside my home. I had shown this to Jalshakti ministry officials who awarded me as a ‘water hero’,” said Zala, adding that he is, however, yet to receive the cash reward of Rs 10,000 from the ministry which he said would have been utilized in laying more pipeline for water harvesting.
Negotiating the narrow staircase of his old house while climbing onto the terrace amid all pipes and tanks every day was a huge difficulty, for which, Zala found a solution. He tied ropes on the terrace and walked using the ropes as guides not to venture beyond the ropes or the colour marked areas which he has painted with dark colours so that he could see blurred images.
Every year it’s a pre-monsoon ritual for Zala Zala every year to check the pipes and fitting religiously before the rains arrive. This year too, he will complete the same ritual by next month. Zala’s son Yashrajsinh and nephew Harshdeepsinh also help him in water harvesting, whenever possible.
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