Hyderabad, October 25: Nanda Kumari wasn’t a climate change expert and had never attended high-profile meetings on environment issues.
Having studied up to Class X and battling the stigma of being thrown out of the house by her husband in Nizamabad within three years of marriage, she possibly had more serious issues to address in her lifetime, such as raising her son as a single parent.
But she did manage to do a little more. She encouraged her son to use public transport even as she would fret over the hectic mining activity in the state that was depleting the groundwater level. She knew that a fuel like petrol was non-renewable and had to be used cautiously, sparingly.
Four months after her death, when her lawyer son K Ranveer Reddy donated property worth crores of rupees to the government for environmental and charitable purposes, he highlighted the most important lesson he had learnt from his mother— that of giving back to society.
Ranveer Reddy, 32, and employed with a private firm, has donated property which his mother had inherited as her share from her father, a landlord. Reddy has also donated half of the ancestral property he inherited from his paternal side.
“Her house will be used for poor women studying for degree and the land I have given will be developed and maintained as a reserve forest, a ‘vanam’, which would be named after my mother,’’ Ranveer Reddy said, referring to the discussions he has had with revenue officials at Adilabad and Nizamabad, where the donated properties are located.
–Agencies