"Whenever I give anyone a money plant in a bottle as part of my ‘Green Kiran’ initiative, they always have the same question – where do I get the bottles from. Someone once commented on a Facebook post of mine, wondering how much my husband and I drank – a comment which hurt my feelings quite a bit. I responded by telling them of a Palestinian lady who uses grenade shells to grow plants. This doesn’t mean that the lady actually lobs those grenades at targets! My husband and I don’t need to get drunk on whisky, gin, rum, wine or beer to get the bottles.

Actually, I get the bottles from a lot of different places. Sometimes my friends give me empty jam or ketchup bottles. Sometimes my husband and I go to parts of Jaipur where the junk sellers congregate and sometimes we even pick up empty bottles of alcohol that litter the roads of Nahargadh. My husband and some of my friends have helped me enormously in my efforts to find bottles for my ‘Green Kiran’ initiative.

It all started one day when I was listening to the Gurbani. It said, “You always keep saying I, me, myself. Do something for someone else too, once in a while.” Upon considering this, I realized that in the 28 years of this life I hadn’t really done anything for anyone else. I started thinking about what I could do. There was a jar with a money plant in it, right in front of me. It gave me an idea – I could distribute a hundred money plants to people. Since my father’s death anniversary was a month later, I decided that this would be my tribute to him – the man who had instilled in me a love of flowers and gardening.

I decided upon the money plant because I had experienced the hardships of trying to grow plants in flowerpots in a flat, shortly after I got married. After a few failed efforts, I was able to successfully raise a money plant there. It made me realize that in this day and age, when everybody lives in flats, even the earth required for flowerpots is at a premium. However, a money plant can grow easily in water with the help of a stem. You can even use the first plant to graft a second one and a third and so on. In the course of this initiative, I’ve even disproved the myth that money plants can’t grow in plastic bottles. It is my hope that I’ve brought greenery into people’s lives and that others too are inspired to do the same.”