Usha Rajagopalan, Lake Warrior

This month, The Silver Hall of Fame features Usha Rajagopalan, writer and lake conservationist. A woman who wears many hats, Usha is an award-winning writer, whose versatile works include poetic translations of Subramania Bharati?s poems to literary novels and an engaging crime thriller series. Her latest book, A Bond So Sacred, is set during the freedom struggle. Usha has been instrumental in reviving the Puttenahalli lake in her South Bangalore neighbourhood, with the help of other committed citizens.

Concerned by the worsening state of the lake, Usha led an initiative to save it from misuse and extinction. Her persistence and hard work has paid off and today, Puttenahalli Lake is a beautiful green space, teeming with birds and a variety of trees, many of them handpicked by Usha herself.

Usha is the chairperson of the Puttenahalli Neighbourhood Lake Improvement Trust (PNLIT), a not for profit charitable trust involved in the restoration of the lake. PNLIT was the winner of the prestigious Namma Bengaluru Award in 2012, an initiative that honours ordinary citizens for their extraordinary contributions. Usha herself has been the recipient of several awards and recognitions for her lake related work. She received the ?Woman of Substance? award from Rotary Club, Bangalore in 2014 and was recently honoured for for being a ?role model of women leadership excelling to promote environmental protection? by the Divine India Youth Association (DIYA), Mumbai. She?s also a newly minted grandmother and balancing her many roles with equal ease.

Silver Talkies presented a voucher from Four Fountain Spa to Usha Rajagopalan.