Contrarywise

(19 Feb ’12)

            Nothing artificial, no plastic, everything as Nature intended it to be: some people like to be like that. They’re the kinds who make rassagullas and spaghetti at home. They buy ingredients from shops that promise them they are grown with cow-dung. No chemicals, nothing artificial about what goes into their mouths. If you notice, they lug back kilograms of organic stuff, sun-ripened, hand cut or ground or plucked, packed in jute or paper bags, to their cars. There are a few who use cycles made of steel and hardened rubber tyres, but they’re really only a few. Mostly the organic-food, khadi-kapda-natural-dyes, no-synthetics kinds are also lovers of new cars and air-conditioners. Bullocks and carts that go with them are a bit too natural to use.

            I use either my feet or the local bus to take me from point A to B. I carry canvas bags to avoid strangling the gutters with discarded polythene bags. At the end of a shopping junket, I’m quite often exhausted. It’s preserving me versus preserving the planet, I feel at times.

            The Earth Saving Mantra comprises three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

            Reduce actually means don’t shop. It means you can do with eight sets of clothes. One for each day of the week and one for formal occasions. I believe in uniforms. If every office or factory worker wore one, they’d save on their own clothes. Companies aren’t likely to buy new stuff readily, so overall there is a reduction in use of one’s personal clothes. What will happen to the economy if people don’t shop? How’d I know, I’m Green. Now Reduce means shop only when necessary. You break a chappal, buy another. You run out of perfume, buy another. Is perfume a necessity? Fresh topic for debate. It could be flower-based, not synthetic. What if it’s sandalwood based? Sandalwood is almost extinct. Should one extract oil from it for cosmetic use? Is man to live by bread alone? Would this come under Beauty Without Cruelty or is that restricted to fish, feathers and four-legged creatures? Reduce will save you a lot of dusting, tidying and money: think egg-beaters, chapatti-makers and milk-boilers. And, curios: plastic Japanese dolls, plaster of Paris Ganapatis, pen-stands, table-lamps, ashtrays, Taj Mahals imprisoned in acrylic, brass vases… thank heavens for digital photography, we are spared photograph albums. 

            Reuse means when that jar of skin-softening or hair-styling cream is over, wash it, dry it and use it to store masalas. No plastic you say? Line the container with foil. If you throw it…. You’re not really Green then. Real planet lovers shouldn’t be into new  mobile phones, televisions or anything that can be thrown away. Any kind of non-essential shopping is anti Planet.

            Recycle is what isn’t happening to our Goan Garbage. As far as plastic is concerned, the first two R’s aren’t being followed. Even the organic-foodies don’t. Most states have a wonderful community called the Bhangar or Raddhi walas. Goa doesn’t. We could, if we wanted clean neighbourhoods, burn our plastic stuff. We have some way to go before we realize that we create our own garbage without help from the Bhailley.

            Next on my agenda is the killing of eight Puneites by a bus driven awry. Everyone’s debating about how horrid the bus drivers are. Everyone also needs to figure out (for our own safety’s sake), how many drivers are diabetic, or have neurological problems, or are plain stressed out and overworked. Pilots have tests, even train drivers to, but not the bus chaps. I’ve traveled multiple times by Kadamba and Maharashtra State Buses in and out of Goa and can vouch for the quality of their driving: good, and even on very wet, poor visibility monsoon days. We spare no thought, no time for training (be it of policemen, teachers, surgeons or tailors) and then we bad mouth them when something goes wrong. I think the aam aadmi needs to be locked up once in a while for jaywalking. I have little sympathy for someone who has dodged across moving traffic and then got injured. Ask for trouble, and you’ll get it. How is it that no mother is ever pulled up when a child runs onto the road and gets injured by a passing vehicle? I’ve never heard of a motorcyclist getting into trouble for weaving in and out of speeding traffic. Truck-drivers are rash. Of course. But motorcyclists are rash, too, far more often and dangerously so.

            Having said that, may you and yours reach home safely, day after day, and may you consider going organic even whilst you’re wondering how to deal with the plastic waste in your house. Ciao.

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