TIRELESS PURSUIT: From sofa sets to planters, Anand does not look beyond tyres

Sometimes the bleakest of times brings out latent talents and turn lives around. Sometimes the very wheels that feed mankind's wanderlust become the means to hold them close to home and hearth. In comfort, too. At least, that's what entrepreneur and inventor, Delhi's 55-year-old Rama Anand would have you believe. Six years ago, diagnosed with a potentially debilitating, even life-threatening neurological condition, she didn't know whether there was anything left to hope for. But it took an innocuous query to change all that. Her domestic help asked if he should throw away some used car tyres lying in the garage. Anand's instinctive response was typically Indian: no, maybe something useful could be fashioned out of them. Still weak from medication, she somehow put together a trolley of tyres, placing one on top of the other and attaching wooden planks and small wheels at the bottom. And so began a unique experiment at producing eco-friendly, eye-catching furniture that took Anand closer to her long cherished dreams of "doing something and being someone", buried under long years of being a good homemaker to a successful business family. Encouraged by the response to her furniture line, she has set up a charity organisation, the Ramanand Trust, to which the sale proceeds of her work will go.

Enter her basement studio-cum-office at her Sainik Farms home and a line of sleek and surprisingly comfortable furniture beckons you to rest your bones on. There's a set of king-size lounge sofas made from tractor tyres and upholstered in soothing blue. The edges of the tyres are cleverly varnished and painted to make the grooves add to their aesthetic appeal. There are smaller, softer living room sets, completely covered in elegant printed upholstery. If it were not for their firm yet spongy feel, you could hardly believe they were made from bus tyres. There's more. An elegant console table fabricated out of a half-cut tyre and wire. Circular coffee tables of various heights topped by smoked glass-some with built-in lights and tinted tops. Office chairs, bar-stools, plant pots and lamp-shades made from two-wheeler tyres add to the quaint charm of the studio.

The process of translating Anand's unusual ideas into tangible pieces isn't too complex, but it is laborious. The tyres, sourced from kabadi dealers, are graded according to size and treated with a chemical to removes the pungent smell and add gloss. They are then sliced into sections depending on the design. That is when Anand's small but well-trained staff gets into the act of moulding marrying the tyres to elegant wire stands, wrought iron and wood. Finally, each piece is fitted with small steel wheels so that it is easy to move.

Anand, one of the founder members of the Delhi Art Gallery, is quick to point out that the vital aspect of her creations is not that they have a unique "designer" look to them, but that they substitute wood completely with used rubber-a small if significant step towards a sustainable, environment-friendly culture. The disposal of used tyres has prove a municipal headache the world over. Small wonder then that more than a hundred countries have granted Anand a patent for her unique line of eco-friendly furniture.

She chuckles on recalling that when she told her patent attorneys she had found a way to make things out of waste matter, they couldn't guess she was using tyres. Now she's even found a partner in the National Research and Development Organisation, a governmental body that takes care of patent-related concerns when her furniture is exported.

A Hyderabad-based environmental society recently gave her a national award for energy conservation and pollution control. Could things get better? Actually, they could. Patent infringement is already a problem she could do without ("I've pretty much become a patent lawyer myself," she laughs), and handling the furniture project as well as the trust almost single-handedly are taking its toll. So why doesn't she hand over the reigns of at least one of them and enjoy the benefits? Anand's answer is emphatic. "This is not a business for me," she says almost fiercely. "It really upsets me when people treat it like a money-making concern. I want to make a difference. And that never comes without a price. But I'm not going to be intimidated by the odds." Some people, as a tyre manufacturer might put it, are "born tough".