It took around two years for Sushmita, who suffers from depression, to turn her life around and sustain herself. In a room near the female ward of the Government Hospital for Mental Care at Erragadda in Hyderabad, she is joined by her friends Pratima and Jagruti. The three women, supervised by a volunteer, sit comfortably on a stool in front of a leaf-making machine with four dyes (blocks). The trio heat-press an unevenly shaped vistaraku (adda leaf; botanical name- Bauhinia vahlii) and a cardboard square under the dye to make a sturdy, circular eco-friendly leaf plate. The women make plates of different sizes for different purposes: tiffin (eight inches), dinner (12 inches), and also without cardboard. After making 25 plates of each variety, they laminate them and segregate the waste. These 25 plates are later sold at ₹88 (tiffin), ₹138 (dinner) and ₹113 (non-sturdy big plates). “People book over the phone and come to collect them from the hospital,” informs volunteer Gujjaralamudi Jyothi.
“It is an easy process, we learnt how to make leaf plates in a day,” says Sushmita. While seven women have been trained, these three women become skilled.
