When Change Shows Up at 6 AM
(And why real sustainability doesn’t wait for perfect conditions)
It was 6:00 AM. My phone rang.
“Sir, Madam wants to visit the unit today.”
No briefing. No heads-up.
Just that line. And a shift in gear.
Still groggy from sleep, I sat up and ran through a mental checklist:
- Is the team there?
- Are the machines running?
- Is everything clean? Presentable? Aligned?
Then I stopped myself.
This wasn’t a pitch.
This wasn’t an investor walkthrough.
This was a real opportunity to show the work as it is — not dressed up, not rebranded.
👣 Enter Supriya Sahu IAS
Supriya Sahu mam, Additional Chief Secretary – Environment, Climate Change & Forests, walked into our facility that morning not for ceremony…
…but for clarity.
She didn’t stop at the entrance for a handshake and a headline.
She moved with intent —
Asking questions.
Touching materials.
Looking into bins.
Speaking to operators.
No entourage energy.
Just engagement.
For over an hour, she absorbed everything — the process, the challenges, the scale potential, the systemic impact.
She didn’t come to be impressed.
She came to see if this works.
Really works.
🧭 What That Moment Meant
In the sustainability world, a lot happens on stages.
Decks. Panels. Vision documents. ESG scorecards.
And yes, all of that matters.
But change happens when people step into the actual system.
When they get their shoes dirty. When they go where the problem lives.
That morning reminded me of something important:
You can’t reform what you haven’t felt.
You can’t scale what you don’t understand.
⚙️ Where Policy Meets Practice
This visit didn’t just validate our work — it energized our purpose.
Because for circular systems to thrive in India,
we need more than startups building in isolation.
We need public-private conversations that aren’t just performative.
We need leaders who are curious, not just convinced.
And we need fast mornings like this, where change doesn’t wait for decks or PR.
It just arrives. Unexpected. Unfiltered.
And it says: Show me what you’ve built.
At Cercle X, we’ve spent years fighting the invisible battle —
Making waste traceable.
Turning discarded material into value.
Proving that climate execution is possible, even in chaos.
But that day, we didn’t have to say any of it.
The work spoke for itself.
💬 A small note to fellow builders
If you’re in a messy space, where the work is hard to explain…
If you're building something real, but quiet…
If you're fixing what the world doesn’t yet see as broken...
Keep going.
You don’t always get time to prepare.
But when the spotlight shows up —
Be ready to tell your truth through your work.
Because change doesn’t always arrive with applause.
Sometimes, it shows up at 6 AM.
And when it does, the ones who are ready… lead.
—
Thanks for reading,
Vishnu Vardhaan