Water is one of the major fundamental resources required for the survival of all living organisms, and lack of it has disastrous consequences. due to dry weather and severe drought, people across india are suffering from shortage of water. groundwater, which has been steadily depleting for years, makes up 40% of the country's water supply. according to a 2018 report by government-think tank niti aayog, a total of 21 major cities could reach zero groundwater levels by 2020. other sources of water are also running dry. as stated by the country's central water commission in june 2019, almost two-thirds of india's reservoirs are running below normal water levels. hundreds of thousands of residents wait in line every day to fill their pots at government water tankers, people are forced to wash utensils in the same dirty water, saving a few bottles of clean water to cook food. however, on a positive note, some areas of india are fortunate to have a relatively humid climate. in these areas, fog harvesting could be one solution for water collection. fog is a potential water resource that could be obtained from the atmosphere using existing technologies. one of the ways of collecting fog from the atmosphere is by developing patterned surface of hydrophobic and hydrophilic regions, similar to namib desert beetles back. they have the ability to harvest water from fog-laden wind due to the presence of alternating hydrophobic-waxy and hydrophilic-non waxy surfaces. inspired from namib desert beetle, we are aiming at developing a patterned surface with both superhydrophobicity and superhydrophilicity using inexpensive precursor material and by a simple approach which can be easily scaled up. for this reason, we have used fly ash which is an industrial waste obtained from burning of mineral coal. it is easily available and using it in a proper way can help in waste management too. superhydrophobic surfaces can be developed by either roughening the low surface energy materials or by modifying rough surface with low surface energy materials. in our case, we have modified rough and extremely hydrophilic fly ash surface with stearic acid (sa), a low energy material. the patterned surfaces with both superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic regions can be used for water harvesting application. the fog droplets will first bind to the surface with superhydrophilic region, forming fast growing droplets and once it attains a size beyond which, the weight of the accumulated droplet can overcome the capillary force that attaches it to the superhydrophilic surface and therefore the water droplet detaches and rolls down the superhydrophobic surface with low adhesion at a small tilt angle. therefore, in order to capture water from the fog, the surface should consist of patterned surface with both superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic regions. in addition, superhydrophobic fly ash produced in this work is useful as an economic alternative to superhydrophobic coatings for concrete materials, tent fabric, waterproof coatings for grain storage containers, and waterproof and self-cleaning coating for monuments, needed to avoid damage due to rains.