Skip to main content

Plastic and we



In the autumn of 2004, I made my first trek in the Garhwal Himalayas along with a group of students. Hemkund at a height of 4600 metres was our destination. We started our trek from Govind Ghat on a fine morning with a lot of enthusiasm and excitement. It was a two-day trek with a stopover at Ghangaria. We took in the mesmerising charms of the Himalayas as we plodded on the weary way. In the afternoon of the first day, a few hundred metres down Ghangaria, we were stunned by something that was just incredible. A whole mountain of plastic bottles and plastic waste lay in the course of the Laxman Ganga.
Starting off from Govind Ghat, Maggie and I
Most of the trekkers were pilgrims, people who went to pray at the Gurudwara atop the peak after taking a holy dip in the icy lake. What kind of spirituality is it that failed to teach people a basic respect for the planet?
We have so many beautiful slogans which are going to save everything from the rivers to the mountains, the planet itself. Save the trees, save the whales, save the snails, and what not. But just take a look around and you’ll be amazed by what you see. No one is saving anything. Our slogans sound so hollow. They are hollow.
Two years ago Kerala was buffeted by tremendous rains and floods. The two rivers that flow through my village were inundated. When the waters receded eventually, what remained on the banks of the rivers was an incredible mass of plastic. Plastic bottle and carry-bags covered the entire banks on both sides. It was a terrifying sight.
The experience taught the state a lesson, however. The Panchayats in the state swung into action and now there is a well-oiled machinery for collecting plastic waste from every household and sending it to the shredder.
Shredding is not the best solution. Why not reduce the use of plastic? I carry a shopping bag so that I can avoid some of the plastic at least that shopkeepers give us generously. Everything from food items to furniture comes in plastic.
Maybe, every religion should make it a sin to use plastic unless it is unavoidable. Will that work? I don’t know. I don’t see religions working anywhere. Yet they could try to be useful this way at least. Some awareness will descend on people, perhaps.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 302: As responsible citizens, should not we ask people using polythene in market not to use or should we be quiet? #environment

Comments

  1. pranitaDecember 8, 2019 at 9:04 PM

    Good idea.

    ReplyDelete
  2. rifle range boyDecember 9, 2019 at 12:27 PM

    people pray for the soul; the physical earth is maya. so they say!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 9, 2019 at 12:57 PM

      Hahaha... When someone told me once that the earth was maya, i told him to kick the huge boulder that lay on the roadside.

      Delete
  3. Yogi SaraswatDecember 9, 2019 at 4:04 PM

    every religion should make it a sin to use plastic unless it is unavoidable.Good idea

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jyotirmoy SarkarDecember 10, 2019 at 8:06 PM

    Intellectual idea, religion can make any changes...
    Plastic is a threat for the human race , hopefully one day people will realize its fatal effect.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Rahila BashaDecember 11, 2019 at 10:00 PM

    What irritates me the most is the hypocrisy displayed by us. the same people who litter everywhere in our country wont even think about it in foreign countries. Where does your sense go ? i questioned a couple of people on their double standards, they say everybody litters in india so they do it too. What sort of thinking is this ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 12, 2019 at 7:27 AM

      Absolutely relevant observation. Indians seem to share that herd mentality too much: do just what the next guy does.

      Delete
  6. BioTechBugOctober 28, 2020 at 1:05 PM

    Plastic free earth can be possible through the Biotech.
    For more interesting and informative Biotechnology related posts go to BioTechBug website.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...
22 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

Akbar the Brutal

When I was in school, I was taught that Akbar was a great emperor. ‘Akbar the Great’ was the title of the lesson on him. That was how the emperor was described in history in those days. Now the grade 8 history textbook calls that same man Akbar the Brutal . A lot of efforts are being made to rewrite India’s history. All Muslims are evil in that new history. In fact, everyone except Hindus stands the chance of being accused of much evil. It is sheer coincidence that I started reading Manu S Pillai’s new book, Gods, Guns and Missionaries , soon after reading newspaper reports about the alleged brutality of the Mughals. In the very first chapter, Pillai presents Akbar as a serious spiritual seeker as well as advocate of religious tolerance. Pillai’s knowledge of history is vast if the 218 pages of Notes in the book are any indication. Chapter 1, titled ‘Monsters and Missionaries’, starts with three Jesuit missionaries led by Rodolfo Acquaviva visiting Akbar on a personal invitatio...
16 comments
Read more

The Parish Ghost

Illustration by Copilot Designer Fiction Father Joseph woke up hearing two sounds. One was his wall clock striking the midnight hour. The other was totally unfamiliar, esoteric. Like the faint sigh of someone too weary to knock at heaven’s door. Father Joseph thought it was the wind. Until the scent of jasmine, oddly out of season, began to haunt his bedroom in the presbytery which was just a few score metres from the parish cemetery. “Is someone there?” Father Joseph asked without getting up. He was more than a bit scared. He never liked this presbytery which was too close to the cemetery. But he had to endure it until his next transfer. “Yes, father,” an unearthly voice answered. From too close, not outside the room. “Pathrose.” “Pathrose who?” A family name was mentioned in answer. “But that family…” Father Joseph’s voice quivered, “no one of that family is alive as far as I know.” “You’re right,” Pathrose said. “We perished because we were too poor to survive what our...
8 comments
Read more