Simple brick tank composting

No underground pits, no fancy or complex organic digesters or converters. Sierra Towers uses a strip of simple brick tanks built along the wall at the far corner of the apartment compound for composting. Located in Lokhandwala, Kandivali East, Mumbai, Sierra Towers, houses 250 families, and these compost tanks have been adequate to hold the wet waste of all the households.

Compost tanks at Sierra Towers, Jan 2016

A trouser transformed

What does one do with a 46″waist discarded/ donated trouser? Though in reasonably good condition, the chances of finding someone who could continue to use it as a trouser are slim.

With a bit of thought, a few snips and my sewing machine, I was able to use almost every bit of fabric to turn out four useful bags. Buttons, labels, zip, pockets – all retained. All that was left unusable was a small strip. Actually, I ran short of fabric for one strap, so I needed to use a cut-off bottom part of a checked shirt, salvaged from a tailor shop.

4 bags from 1 trouser

Sandalwood thieves

In one of my earlier posts, I had talked about a real life midnight adventure.

It was September 1995. Veerappan, the notorious sandalwood smuggler (and his associates) was active in the forests of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, having killed several people who came in his way. Efforts to capture him and his team were being made by both state governments. With the forests being well guarded, it seems that the urban sandalwood trees were easier for them to access. Or so we discovered.

That night, the residents of Rose Lane, a quiet by-lane in Richmond Town, were woken up by a loud crash, that brought down the overhead power and telephone cables. The sandalwood tree in the Thomas compound had been cut!