after Gandhigiri, it's time for gulabgiri. Inspired by Munnabhai's exploits, engineering students in the nation's IT capital have hit upon a novel idea to boost their anti-smoking campaign.
Roses in hand, they are flooding Bangalore's upmarket areas and business districts. The campaigners hand each of the smokers a flower, pleading with them to kick the butt.
The students have termed the campaign gulabgiri, which they say is another form of Gandhigiri.
"The term Gandhigiri has become a fad. We have dubbed our effort gulabgiri as we are offering roses to smokers to quit the habit," Ashok Binna, who is leading the campaign, says.
On Monday, the first day of their outing in the upmarket MG Road and Koramangala areas, the students offered roses to as many as 500 smokers.
"All of them willingly accepted the flowers, but less half promised to quit smoking. But we will continue our campaign," Binna says.
The students plan to turn the effort into a weekly affair. Accordingly, they will hit the streets near malls and shopping complexes every Saturday.
"We are targeting youths and students because they will benefit immensely from quitting smoking at an early age. We also have plans to visit colleges," Darius Kej, another campaigner, says.
The students, who study in three engineering colleges, came up with the campaign after they agreed that smoking had become a menace in the colleges and hostels. "We are fed up with our friends and classmates who are not willing to quit smoking.
Therefore, we came up with this idea. Some of them have prom- ised to quit smoking," Kej says.
The campaigners plan to take their fight online by creating gulabgiri groups on Facebook, Orkut and Google. Every visitor will be persuaded to say no to smoking by offering e- roses to smokers they know.
Bangalore has become a hub for such initiatives in recent times. Just after the movie Munnabhai MBBS was released in the city, a woman made news when she launched a floral campaign to oust a tormenting tenant from her house.
When Sri Ram Sene activists bashed up women at a pub in Mangalore, another Bangalorebased woman launched the ' pink- chaddi' campaign against the self- styled protectors of society, eliciting nationwide response.
Now, gulabgiri campaigners, too, intend to attract students across the country through the online forum. With this aim, they are pooling in funds from their pocket money.
Munnabhai would surely have lauded the unique effort, saying: "Lage raho, mamu."
courtesy india today.in
