The Woohoo! Report

It’s Saturday night and a long queue has formed in front of Score, a hip nightclub in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh.

The hefty entry fee of 1,000 rupees ($25) per couple is no deterrent for the city’s bold and beautiful.

Security is tight – guests pay at the counter, have their arms stamped and are then frisked.

Male guests are searched by male bouncers, women by Amandeep Kaur.

She is Chandigarh’s first and only woman bouncer – a rarity anywhere in India, but more so in a male-dominated society like Punjab’s.

‘Like a son’

Punjab has one of the worst sex ratios in the country – here a woman’s life is often valued far less than a man’s.

“My father never made me feel like I was a girl. He always used to tell me – ‘you are like a son to me’,” says Ms Kaur.

She is only 22 and has been three weeks in her job. During the day, she presents news programmes on a local television channel.

Four nights a week, she dons black jeans and a black T-shirt and takes her place outside Score.

As Chandigarh’s rich and beautiful women line up to enter, they have to pass through Ms Kaur’s hands. So why did she choose this unusual job?

Amandeep Kaur frisking a guest (Pic: Geeta Pandey)
Ms Kaur frisks women guests

“Some time ago, I came here to attend a party with some friends. I saw lots of male bouncers, but there was no female bouncer.

“So I told the hotel staff I wanted to be a bouncer. They said that’s not possible. It’s a job only a man can do.”

Ms Kaur set out to prove them wrong. When she first took up the job, her friends and neighbours were shocked. “Why?” everyone wanted to know. Her response: “Why not?”

Anupama Bharadwaj, managing director of Score, says: “We were looking for some time for a female bouncer. With Kaur around, our women customers feel safer.”

And the guests have only nice things to say about the new woman on the door.

Feeling safe

“I had never heard of a lady bouncer but it’s only fair that women get checked too since all the men are checked before they are allowed in. Also, it makes us feel safer if there is a woman bouncer. And she seems quite sweet,” says Nupur, an architect.

Ms Kaur’s work alternates between being at the door (to check those coming in) and inside (to ensure the women guests behave).

“My job is to keep an eye on the women guests – sometimes they get drunk and become a nuisance.

“I also have to make sure that they don’t smoke outside of the designated area, especially in the ladies’ toilet. And that they don’t misbehave with anyone. If I see anyone doing anything wrong, I give them a warning. If they don’t pay any heed, I throw them out.”

Surjit Singh, who heads the team of bouncers at the nightclub, speaks highly of Ms Kaur’s work.

“Earlier, some women would come in and cause trouble, they would harass men, and we couldn’t do anything about them. We’ve also had women trying to sneak in with drugs, but we couldn’t check them. All this has stopped since Kaur has come in.”

The crowded dance floor at Score, in Chandigarh (Pic: Geeta Pandey)
The dance floor is packed to capacity on weekend nights

Ms Kaur has had no special training to be a bouncer. But for the job she is in, being fit is essential.

“I work out in the gym for two hours every morning. I eat a protein-rich diet. I’m very strong, both physically and mentally.”

And most guests seem to take her strength on board – not many, even when they are drunk, mess around with her.

But sometimes, things can – and do – get ugly.

“Last week, this girl was trying to force another in the toilet to smoke. I went in and asked her to stop. When she didn’t, I took away her cigarette and put it out. She lit another one! I had to throw them out,” she says.

Fears

The matter did not end there.

“Once outside, her boyfriend threatened me. He said you would have to pay for what you have done.

“I don’t feel scared but sometimes a thought comes to the back of my mind. I’m safe in the club. But once I finish my duty and leave at 2am, I’m on my own. What happens if they come in a group?”

It’s about 11pm and inside the club, the party is rocking. The bouncers, including Ms Kaur, are strung out across the floor, watching for trouble.

We step out because more guests are coming in and Ms Kaur has to frisk the women before they enter.

A group of young men are outside. Single men are allowed in only if they are regulars and pay a cover charge of 1,500 rupees ($37).

Guests queue up outside Score in Chandigarh (Pic: Geeta Pandey)
Chandigarh has a thriving night life

Checking over, Ms Kaur goes back in and does the rounds – the loos are checked and it all seems under control.

Doors shut at half past midnight. We can now go inside and stay inside.

But for Ms Kaur, as long as there are guests, she cannot relax. And as the evening passes, guests get high on alcohol and music.

One couple have to be escorted out by the bouncers – the man has had way too much to drink and is swaying from side to side.

Another young man comes crashing down the stairs and falls at my feet. One of the bouncers helps him up. Once on his feet, he lurches towards the dance floor. The bouncers let him be.

There are no more incidents.

Amandeep Kaur and the others in her team can now breathe easy – their long night is over. Until the next one.

[source]

It is strange to hear Alka Zadgaonkar say, “Plastics are useful to our lives. We can’t deny that.” Were she a spokeswomen for the dishonest, self-serving plastic industry lobby, that statement would be understandable. Were she a legislator we could say she was evading the issue. Her statement will likely infuriate many of us agonising over the plastic litter all around us.

But hold your breath. Alka loves plastics for an exciting reason; she is the inventor of a process that has the potential to clear our environment of plastic waste, create a million jobs in waste management, add useful, profitable products to our economy and make India a technology leader in taming plastics. Her work is breathtaking good news for this planet’s environment.

Pie on the table:

We are not talking of a pie in the sky idea that is still in the laboratory. Alka and her husband Umesh are buying 5 tonnes of plastic waste everyday in Nagpur at prices attractive to rag pickers. They are wringing fuel oil out of that unsightly pile and selling it to industries in the Butibori Industrial Estate, on Wardha Road out of Nagpur. Production from their plant, Unique Plastic Waste Management & Research Co Pvt Ltd, is sold out for the next year.

They are making money right now, and are about to scale up and buy 25 tonnes of plastic waste a day. That production too is booked. As Nagpur generates only 35 TPD of plastic waste, they will shortly run out of raw material to grow bigger.

The process invented and patented by Alka Zadgaonkar is capable of accepting all tribes and castes of plastic waste as input: carry bags, broken buckets and chairs, PVC pipes, CDs, computer keyboards and other eWaste, the horrible, aluminized crinkly bags of the kind that pack crisps, expanded polystyrene [the abominable 'thermocole'], PET bottles- these and others are all given equal opportunity to contribute to the Zadgaonkars’ profits. No sorting or picking is done. No preparatory cleaning is necessary either, except shredding that helps economic transport of bulky waste. All solids and metal fines settle down in the melting process or are converted to ash.

Chlorinated plastics like PVC are particularly hazardous to burn because they emit dioxins. In the Alka Zadgaonkar process, the entire shredded mixture is melted at a low temperature and led to a de-gasification stage. Here chlorine is led away to harmlessly bubble through water, producing hydrochlorous acid.

Shredded waste is continually fed into a conventional extruder. Here over the length of a heated extruder screw, the waste is plasticised and melted at a relatively low temperature. The melt is then stripped of chlorine as we just saw, and led to a reactor where lies the crux of the invention. The melt interacts with proprietory catalysts invented by Alka. The stable, continual chain of carbon found in all plastics is destabilised by a depolymerization reaction and rendered ready for a rich harvest.

Three streams of produce are obtained. A part of the gaseous cloud is condensed to form a liquid hydrocarbon. This is the recovered fuel oil. It is a sulphur free equivalent of industrial crude. It can be readily used in furnaces or put through fractional condensation to obtaine finer grades like petrol. For a long while to come, the best market for this is as furnace oil for process heating in factories. Zadgaonkar recovery plants, when they spread in the country, can use plastic from local dumps and serve local industries which currently buy expensive furnace oil from far away.

What is not condensable at the reactor is obtained as a LPG equivalent. A modified genset can generate electricity using this gas. This is now standard practice at a Zadgaonkar plant, which is self sufficient for power. The final remains are a solid fuel called petroleum coke. Approximately 70% is liquid hydrocarbon, 15% is gas and 5% is solid coke. Balance is ash and metal fines.

Alka born in 1962, has always had a fascination for organic chemistry. “I was intrigued by the way new products can be created by playing with carbon and hydrogen molecules,” she says. “There was a sense of great control over things.” That mindset was to eventually lead her to her invention.

[Ed. note: for more on the process and the rest of this interesting story, please see link at end of report.]

Edited for brevity. Taken from GoodNews India magazine [source]