DOWN TO EARTH

While grand gestures might make for good cinema, Bhumi Pednekar's real life is about making small, deliberate everyday choices for the planet

- DHVANI SOLANI

MONSTERS LURKING IN the shadows. Crackling thunder. A beloved pet running away. Mum's dreaded nosleepover rule. While these were the things keeping other kids up at night, for 10-year-old Bhumi Pednekar, the world was filled with different anxieties.

She would lie in bed with a racing mind and drum-soloing heart-sweet, unburdened unconsciousness evading her-haunted by the thought of her parents travelling to Australia, where the ozone layer she was studying about was said to be dangerously thin. What if they didn't survive it? Or what if the world ran out of water and her family had not a drop to drink? Her innocent solution? Fantasising that she'd stockpile a warehouse with Bisleri bottles. Looking back, she can't help but laugh at the fact that her childhood workaround is now a problem she's working to fix.