At 60, I had 177K followers - Dr. Meenakshi

“I’d been a homemaker my whole life, but in the early 2000’s, when both my boys were grown up, I suddenly found myself having the time to explore. So, one day I decided to attend our Resident Welfare Association meeting. There, I met Dr. Meenakshi, an activist. She spoke to me about our voting booths being flawed; her energy was infectious.

When she asked me, ‘Would you like to help me spread the word?’ I said, ‘Yes!’
We went door to door matching addresses to names of people living there, and got permission from the government to clean up our booth. And 2 months later, during elections, our booth had the highest percentage of voters! I felt great; I’d brought about change in my own way.

One of those days, Meenakshi told me that she was working on a project about ‘waste segregation.’ By recycling 1 ton of waste paper, we can save 17 trees– I thought, if everybody starts doing this, imagine how many trees we could save!

But people weren’t keen– ‘I don’t have time for all this,’ ‘This isn’t going to make a difference,’ they said. So we enticed them, ‘If you start segregating waste, we’ll give free waste bags for 6 months,’–it worked! I even involved the kids in my building–we made placards and went around Malleshwaram to spread awareness.

A few months later, I visited a landfill site in Bangalore–it was overflowing! I knew I had to do something to not send my house waste here. So I learnt about composting, and once I got back home, I mixed my kitchen waste, dry leaves, cow dung; 40 days later, I had compost.

To use it, I set up a terrace garden and grew curry leaves, broccoli, and figs. Then, I started conducting workshops to educate people. I’d carry worms wherever I went to show them off to kids; everyone started calling me ‘WormRani’!

Now, all the apartments in my building have adopted waste segregation and composting; we even won an award for it! And in 2013, I joined Instagram– the lockdown gave me the push, and I started posting regularly! At 60, I had 177K followers, can you believe it? They even gave me that little blue tick!

2 decades ago, I would have never imagined myself doing all this– I’d never done anything outside the 4 walls of my home before. I was just a simple homemaker. But being able to actually make a difference, and encourage others as well just goes to show that you can start at any age. And in the last 2 decades, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: to live on this planet, you have to give back, even in the smallest of ways. I do it by living sustainably… What are you doing?”

Featuring: Vani Murthy