Dia Mirza Rekhi is known to don many hats. Along with being a beauty pageant winner, an actor and a producer, she is also a green activist and has always been vocal about causes pertaining to the environment. An eco-warrior, she has been part of many clean-up drives, spread awareness about the impacts of pollution and pushed for environmentally sensitive entrepreneurship by investing in many sustainable brands. She is also the goodwill ambassador of UNEP and has extensively worked towards environmental and wildlife conservation in the country.
The last two years have been rather interesting and enriching for her Dia as she became a mother. One look at her social media and we can see a slew of posts where her son, Avyaan Azaad Rekhi, can be seen interacting with and celebrating the bounties of nature. On World Environment Day, we look back at how Dia has been inculcating values of eco-sensitivity and consciousness in her son and step-daughter, Samaira Rekhi, since their early years.
Speaking to News18 exclusively a while back, Dia said, “Children are nature. They’re born with that innate knowledge that everybody and everything born in the natural world is in them. We then beat it out of ourselves with the kind of life that we’ve created. Human beings are the only species that have created walls and separated ourselves from nature. As a parent, what I really want to ensure, is to keep that relationship that my child inherently has with nature alive and active.”
For the Bheed (2023) and Thappad (2020) actor, it is important that she passes on her values to her children and help them grow up to become environmentally responsible citizens. “I really believe in that very powerful quote by Baba Dioum where he says, ‘In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.’ So, it is our disengagement and broken relationship with nature that has led us into the crisis that we are experiencing as a species,” she explained.
The 41-year-old further added, “The first step to becoming more responsible earth citizens is building a relationship with nature and discovering that love and that innate kinship that we have with the natural world.”
As for Avyaan, he has already developed a connection with the nature. Talking about it, Dia shared, “He talks to plants and responds to the birds. He loves watching the butterflies that come and visit his window. I’ve planted lots of flower-bearing plants that attract butterflies. He visited the forest for the first time in December last year.”
Dia married businessman Vaibhav Rekhi in February 2021 and became step-mother to Samaira. In May that year, she gave birth to Avyaan. Motherhood might not have changed her as a person but she now wants to concentrate more on her responsibility as an eco-warrior and continue working towards creating a better world for her children by making the right choices.
Shedding light on the same, she said, “I’m the same person that I was. The only thing is that I feel a lot more responsible and committed to the work that I’m doing. I want to protect and build a future that is safe and healthy for both of my children. Parents are human beings at the end of the day. We’ve our shortcomings and we’re fallible. Our children may perceive us as heroes. But we need to remind them that we’re human and try and make the best choices that we can.”
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