It was any other quite Sunday morning in Malleshwaram. However, for us it was a big day that had dawned.
Malleshwaram Parisara, our annual ecofair by Malleshwaram Swabhimanaa Initiative (MSI) was to take place at Hymamshu Jyothi Kala Peeta on June 28th 2015. This time it was a lot bigger than last year, there was a huge turnout which included a larger number of eco-friendly stalls.
The fair was inaugurated by our MLA Aswathnarayan, Principal of Hymamshu Jyothi Kala Peetha BVA Rao, Vijayakumar and MSI president Sumathi Rao. There were 30+ stalls in all. Most of the stalls were by small time people who wanted to make a big difference to our environment.
There were stalls catering to ways to tackle Bengaluru’s biggest problem today—GARBAGE. The Green Movement stalls were providing composting solutions like the Kambha, Smartbins, perforated buckets etc. The Terrace Gardening stalls educated the crowd about the growing popularity of commodities like grow bags, pots, compost, nutrition, seeds, saplings, orchid plants etc.
The few colourful mixed cotton and jute saris, jewellery and organic bed sheet stalls lightened up the fair, and brought a fun element into the whole event. The event also saw a healthy participation from self-help women groups, where young girls and women had made many things with recyclable stuff, like jewellery, chimes, storage boxes etc.
The Food Court was very efficiently managed by a small time cook Prem, who did an excellent job of providing the participants and visitors a sumptuous feast through the day.
We also had a surprise: A person who insisted on being a part of our fair—a pottery wheel man who is deaf and dumb, found his way to the fair by messaging me many times.
The icing on the cake were the demos on Terrace Gardening by our members Vani Murthy and Ramanna, and also Organic Terrace Gardeners Anuradha and Narayanan Ramanathan.
The turnout was really good and the feedback from the participants was excellent. We from MSI are glad to bring this Green Fair to Malleshwaram. We hope to make it bigger, better and greener next year. We would like to thank all our members, Hymamshu school Principal and support staff, participants and visitors for making this event a grand success.