Whats on My Mind

Disclaimer : This post is not against any culture or society , but about me , about us, about our generation in INDIA

When I was in school , I always had a hankerchief in my hand/pocket. It was inseperable from me. I never used to forget it. And my friends admired and adored me for being so methodical about it. Proud I used to feel. Tissue papers were rare then. We used to see them only in expensive restaurants and we never frequented such places. Expecting tissue paper at a chat shop or ice cream wala was stupidity and people like me were considered elite as we always had a hankey to wipe our leaking nose and sticky hands.

Then we grew up. I moved to bigger cities and India moved to better economy. I realized that in bigger cities no one carries a hankey in their hands /pockets. Everyone uses tissue. Most places have tissue available and even if it was not there females have tissues in their bags , wet/dry face tissues. Hankeys look so dirty and so behanji style here. And I moved to tissues within few months of this realization.

All of us have seen this transition , in one way or other. How many of us have seen tissue papers , toilet paper , paper towels , kitchen rolls in ample amounts when we were kids. How many of our mothers use them even now. How many of us were wiped with papers when we were kids , but I am sure all of us have used paper to wipe the face and bums of our kids.

We moved with the trend. Some realized it and some did not. But what we did not realized is that we moved from a better setup to worse. In the process of moving with the trend or western society we learnt to waste paper. Washable cheap hankeys were better than tissue papers and instead of being proud and saying that I use them because I want to save paper , I moved to tissue papers.

Its not just about paper though. There are so many such practices that we accquired from west recently , because they are convienent or just cool but that are bad for the society and environment.

When we were children we never saw plastic bags inside dustbins. It has plus points that its easy to clear and less messy and easily transportable. BUT , a plastic dustbin under each desk with a plastic bag in each of it and we want to make this world plastic free ????

Aryan’s school serves snacks to kids in disposable plates,hygeine they say! Wow! I wonder how can small kids handle fragile disposable plates. I think it would have been better to invest in colourful plates once and emloy 1-2 people to clean those up everyday.

In Bangalore many roadside food vendors , place a plastic sheet over the plates and serve food over that plastic. Idea is to save the effort of cleaning the plates and customers too find it hygenic. Smart !! I felt when I saw it first , while walking by one on them. I was also surprised that the plastic sheets are made affordable even to them !! On second thoughts though I don’t feel the same.

I wonder how confused we are , we as in INDIA. We want to move with the trend and become modern ..err..western. In the attempt we are loosing some of our good practices. At the same time , we are concerned about environment. We want to save paper , ban plastic and save natural resourses.

I also feel that our generation is the only generation that can make the change. We trasitioned from previous stage to this one and now we only have to step back. If we make our kids used to what we learnt for the worse , we can never hope to save paper. And we need to start today. Good that I realized this atleast today

P.S : Abha did a excellent post on this long back , couldnot locate the link though