Loved reading about this young innovator and environmentalist. Such a great idea fueled by the desire to solve rather than complain from the sidelines. I am a huge fan of innovation from the third world having seen first hand the creativity and moxie of the poor, uneducated and underprivileged people in India. It takes skill and thinking out of box every single day to make the most of the meager resources. One of my early educators was a woman who worked in our home to cook, clean and wash. She had four kids and worked in a dozen homes like ours from the crack of dawn to well past sundown. Her schedule was complex and fraught with uncertainty and interdependencies and yet she performed like well-oiled machine with predictable performance. Even as a child, I could tell what she did was not easy.
R was illiterate and could not tell time any clock digital or analog but she could do that by looking at the position of the sun. She had an elaborate scheme of knots on the sari that was her code for maintaining her daily schedule which included trips to check on her youngest kids to make sure they had been fed timely. The oldest was responsible for preparing meals for the family but she was not tasked with cooking for safety reasons. Just with those knots on her sari and the placement of the sun on the horizon, R was able to serve her customers like my mother flawlessly no matter how confusing their asks were. She had a knot to account for it and the job would get done. I remember watching her with rapt fascination as she made and unmade those knots to serve as her organizer. Over the years, I had the opportunity to observe many creative and innovative people like R who devised mechanisms to maximize what little they had.
Comments