Telangana: With 65,000 seeds, Sircilla girl sets out on path to plant a green future

HYDERABAD: On January 31, Blessy will celebrate her eighth birthday with a difference. She will go along with her father into a nearby forest and sprinkle seed balls for a greener tomorrow.
What Dobbala Blessy from Suddala village in Sircilla’s Konaraopet mandal has created is a seed bank with 65,000 seeds. On Saturday, Blessy sat down to make preparations for her birthday.She made seed balls with mud and kept them ready. On her birthday, she will go along with her father Prakruthi Prakash into the forest area and disperse the seed balls. “We breathe and survive only because of trees. I pick up fallen seeds everyday wherever I see them and bring them home. Sometimes, my friends laugh at me. When I explain the purpose, they understand,” Blessy told STOI.

It was after her father Prakruthi Prakash explained to her the importance of planting trees and improving greenery, that Blessy felt she also had to do her bit. From the seeds that she picked over the last couple of years, 30,000 have already been dispersed after making the seed balls.
“If I happen to stand under a tree, I look around for seeds and pick up and add to my seed bank,” Dobbala Blessy said. Her seed bank comprises seeds of fruit trees like tamarind, neem, mango, custard apple and locally available species of flowering trees. “Whether she is playing near house or at school or walking anywhere, her concentration is only to find seeds,” Blessy’s father Prakruthi Prakash said. Much appreciation comes her way from her teachers and others in the village for her interest to pick up seeds and store them in her seed bank. By way of encouragement, some have told her that for the great work that she was doing, they would give her a present on her birthday.
For Blessy, the forest beckons and she will disperse the seed balls that she herself makes to make a greener world around her.