Remembering Gandhi's personal secretary who walked the talk on conservation and simple living

CHENNAI: Do you leave your hair behind for the hairdressers to throw them out after a haircut? That’s a lot of wealth shed behind! I don't. I share it with cancer patients if it's long enough as a crowning glory when they ask for it. When it's short and not usable by the hairdressers, I ask them to return mine fallen on the floor, after a nice summer crop. I leave nothing behind. It amuses people around initially. The hair stylists tell me nothing can be done as making a wig with it if ever I am contemplating that idea. It is a request they appreciate and pack for me, as, after all, it goes to the dustbin. They have no use for it. But, it's so useful for my plants!!! They don’t know that.

I learnt that from my dad (late) V Kalyanam who was vain enough to state India got her Independence on his birthday. He personally executed his haircut at home all his life by himself and never threw a strand out, living almost 100 years. He never went to a salon all his life. My grandfather who had a tuft growing, also never went to a parlor. The barber came home in those days and shaved off the hair on the head and stubs of beard for the staunch, affordable Brahmins living even in Agraharams. But my dad did it all by himself and never would allow the barber, even if he came home for his dad. Appa was self-made and was never dependent on anyone.

Black, grey or silver hair, they all served the plants' purpose of nitrogen is what he taught me. Three years after his demise, I realised such secrets that were shared during his lifetime came in so handy.

Hardly a few know such things and simply fling their falling hair out without knowledge of its rich nitrogen content. Nitrogen is crucial for plant growth, and each strand of hair is made of roughly 16 per cent of this essential nutrient. By contrast, a pile of cow manure typically has between 0.6 to three per cent nitrogen according to reliable sources. A month of fallen hair from every individual at home can serve so many plants so don’t crib on hair fall, think you are donating food for the garden.

That should make you happy. Reducing carbon footprints is important and a duty of every citizen whilst on earth. Making home compost reduces carbon footprint. Another means of reducing carbon footprints is car-pooling, which he always resorted to. Never would appa drive his car alone. He would always stop the car to give lifts to children returning from school with a pile of books on their backs/elderly women walking down or standing in bus stops if ever there was even a single seat empty/ vacant in his car. Also, he used my Lady Hamilton bicycle even as old as when he was in his mid-seventies to go places nearby, and it never did matter to him that people were amused to see him coming in, riding on a ladies’ cycle as a chief guest. He was highly economical in his way of living.

He would never waste anything. Every envelope that came to him by post would be slit and used as one-sided paper, which he learnt from Mahatma Gandhi, for whom he served as personal secretary for five years from 1943 till the Mahatma's demise. People used thorns of the Bougainvillaea in the pre-Independence era was something I came to know from him. There were no staple pins used in the offices in those days. Frugality came so naturally to him.

In cooking too, which he specialised in, he would keep everything ready before lighting the gas. Many women, light the gas first and then search the vessel they want to keep on the flame, not realizing the wastage of gas. Not surprisingly, their gas supply lasts for a much shorter period. I have never known him to waste electricity either. He was used to entertaining so many guests at home and every one of them had some lessons to take home in matters of economy when they lived with him even for a short while.

Even when cleaning vessels, he would first wipe plates with the old daily-sheet calendar which he stacked near the sink to remove the oil grease first. This way, his water consumption and soap were much less comparatively. Water from washing rice/dals always went for plants as they were a rich source of nutrients and were never wasted. He was able to donate several crores of rupees only by his frugal ways. Little drops make an ocean. Good habits serve a lifetime.

Kalyanam always wore clean clothes that he washed but didn't have more than two or three in his wardrobe. He would make do with the banyans and two pairs of socks, both with umpteen potholes. When he got a new one, the old socks would be inserted into the hand, and reused to clean the window sills and staircase rails! Unless they were beyond a wearable state, he would never buy a new one. Every Diwali meant buying new clothes normally by society at large, but not for a man like him who believed that buying a new one was warranted only if the existing clothes were not wearable. The same principle held good for anything that was to be purchased.

The Shimla-born Kalyanam donated large sums of money by his sacrifices in this manner. On this 77th Indian Independence Day 2024, on Kalyanam’s 102 birth anniversary, his daughter Malini, founder trustee of ‘The PALM – a Public Charitable Trust‘ reminisces the way a Gandhian lived amidst us, serving as an example, of many trivial things that made a significant contribution to the planet. 

Reduce-Reuse-Recycle were his mantra as a staunch Hanuman devotee.