Nagnath Phulari, a cobbler, has never visited a shopping mall in his life. However, on December 19, as part of the Repair Festival, Phulari, along with others into repair work, such as watch repairers, knife sharpeners, rafuwalas, bag repairers, mobile repairers and tailors would be at the Seasons Mall to participate in the Beauty of Recycling Festival that propagates the concept of ‘Reuse, Reduce, Recycle’. Organised by city-based eCoexist, the fifth annual festival on recycling would be held from December 16-21 and feature various events to highlight the aesthetic and economic reuse potential of waste and features workshops, exhibitions, drama, fashion shows and so on. Rashi Goel, one of the coordinators, said, “The concept of getting things ‘repaired’ is slowly diminishing especially in big cities. Every time anything gets worn out, people just walk into shops or malls and pick up new ones instead of getting them repaired. The idea of getting repairers on board is to promote the idea of repairing and reusing instead of discarding things.” Goel said that the concept is very popular in the western world as ‘repair cafes’. “And hence to suit the Indian taste, we called it ‘repairwalas’, which sounds more ‘desi’,” she adds. Phulari, who’s been a cobbler for 40 years, agrees that the trend of people going away from the practice of ‘repairing’ things, have badly hit his earnings. However, he admits to be sticking to the profession because he is not skilled in any other work. So how easy was it to get the repairers on board? “All the repairers run their families on daily earnings. So we had to promise them that even if they are not making any money at the counter, we would pay them the amount that they earn on a single day so that they don’t lose out at the Repair Festival,” Goel said. Other than the repairwallahs, the Recycling Festival would feature many interesting events such as workshops for children; panel discussion on ‘Designing for Social Change’; street play; recycled fashion show; drumming on waste materials; children’s theatre; and an exhibition of recycled products.
