I built a home at the age of five.

One morning, I woke up to a note under my pillow.

Dear Veda,

Thank you for your first tooth! I will plant it in my fairy garden, and it will become a beautiful white flower.

Keep smiling,

The Tooth Fairy

I beamed brightly with my missing front tooth and immediately jumped out of bed. Eager to see the Tooth Fairy, I decided to create a home for her.

Whenever my five-year-old self felt short of inspiration, the kitchen’s trash can was my muse. It had everything I needed: pizza savers could be tables for the fairy to sit around and drink her tea. Match sticks could be connected and turned into fences to guard the territory. Plastic bottle caps could be filled with water for the fairy to bathe in. Everything could be anything. In no time, I had transformed a shoebox into a home for the Tooth Fairy.

“Home: A place that provides a feeling of comfort, security, and happiness.”

If only the definition was that simple. My family often moved from city to city as my father chased after his corporate job. I packed my life into cardboard boxes labeled ‘clothes,’ ‘books,’ and ‘toys.’ Though every new home we moved into was different, these boxes remained the same. Empty, waiting to be filled once again. But to me, they were resources. I could use them in the theatrical productions I put on for my parents. Small boxes became props, like my sword for slaying fire-breathing dragons. Larger ones became backdrops, like my enchanted castle. Everything could be anything.

Eventually, the effects of constantly moving hit us. My father suffered a heart attack and lost his job. But no matter where I lived, my roots remained the same. Coorg, a land of lush, green coffee farms, was always supposed to be my home. A home I had never lived in but was always linked to by blood. However, when we turned to our family in Coorg in times of need, they rejected us because I, as a female, could not inherit the farm. Coorg, a land where I was supposed to find comfort, security, and happiness, was everything but my home.

Yet, akin to how the shoebox turned into a Fairy Garden and the cardboard boxes into enchanted castles, perhaps I could turn Coorg into my home. Ultimately, all it takes is to dig a little deeper into the trash can to find value amidst what had been discarded. At age fifteen, I embarked on an adventure among the coffee farms of Coorg. I meandered through the thick evergreen bushes of white coffee flowers, following the trail deeper and deeper into the forest. Suddenly, I felt a cold wetness in my Crocs. Curious and cautious, I lifted my foot and examined the ground underneath. To my surprise, a small trickle of water had emerged from the soil. It was a water spring. The water was incredibly pure and clear, it sparkled

like liquid diamonds in the sunlight. This life-giving force protects Coorg’s ecosystems, agriculture, and human existence.

And we coffee farmers are destroying it.

A brown acidic liquid with a foul odor infests the blue-tinted fresh waterbodies Mother Nature gifts us. It is a toxic liquid waste produced by profit-driven coffee farmers that is endured by the environment. And the solution? It was in the trash can, like it always was. I realized that plastic barrels lying around the farm could be connected and converted into a sedimentation system. Sedimented coffee skin waste could be used for organic compost. Treated wastewater could be reused in irrigation. Everything could be anything. In this way, I created my sense of belonging instead of inheriting it. 

This circular system of production is now utilized by farmers across Coorg, a place I now proudly call home. Its cost-effective use of barrels and the simultaneous generation of economic by-products attract farmers from all income brackets. Over the past two years, I have collaborated with HumbleBean, a start-up coffee shop in India focused on promoting coffee awareness and literacy. With their guidance, I gained extensive knowledge of coffee production, conducted research and experiments, and led outreach programs to raise awareness among farmers across India about my findings.

This creation of mine means the most to me because regardless of whether I am a girl, Coorg is my home. My real-life fairy garden that grows with beautiful white coffee flowers. This is where I have finally found comfort, security, and happiness.