EDITOR'S CHOICE

I didn't know it then, but my mission to save the Earth had begun as a child. It's not as if I woke up one morning and decided I was going to be a caped mascot on an eco-friendly assignment. As long as I could remember my grandmother would set me off on a daily ritual: collecting the fallen leaves of a jackfruit tree in our lane, for compost and by the way, bringing home the mellow ones for her cheroot puffs. Assiduously, we would stuff the dead and rotting leaves into a huge gunny sack, and the one who brought her the most 'cheroot' leaves was given an extra helping of 'poi' or freshly baked brown bread with herbal tea. When we went out shopping (read vegetable market, not Mall), we'd set out with a cloth bag or a woven cane bag (of which there were plenty around the house). We never threw away anything. Clothes, would be darned and repaired beyond recognition, and when we finally decided we couldn't wear it a minute longer, we simply passed them down to the next sibling, or the next building.

We even found innovative uses for our old radios and rolling pins. The radio, yanked off its wires and cables became a happy storing space, and the belan became a weapon of mass destruction. It always emerged when the elders were in a rage or unable to control the next generation of devious pollutants such as we. Our kitchens would be a hot house of chilli plants and curry leaves and our cars were used only when five people together wanted to go in the same direction. Of course, at the time, we didn?t know we were doing the earth a big favour. We were just doing what we were taught and in the bargain not getting any of those wonderful plastic carry bags that our western cousins were flashing under our noses every time they visited. We were living a dowdy existence, while they were not. They were the Pashas of Plastic Bags, and Divas of Disposable Lifestyle where everything from ill-fitting clothes, to pressure cookers to grandmothers were despatched after brief use. We imagined the West never had to buy anything. They simply plucked sofas and sewing machines, off the streets. Clearly we were being deprived. And so a whole generation of youngsters grew up rebelling against jute bags and healthy steamed jaggery snacks. We traded these for sexy Marks & Spencer's foreign plastic bags and bottled juices. Not satisfied, we ate sliced white bread and gorged on aerated drinks and 'imported' snacks. Now this is what we called egalitarian. We weren't third world anymore. Except that somewhere someone among us woke up bruised and broke. Because, we found that while we were piling up the plastic and revving up the engines of our Marutis, our flashy cousins had turned into us and we into them. They were eating brown bread and drinking green tea. They abhorred plastic bags and wagged a finger every time we begged them for some. Cycling was sexy. Recycling was orgasmic. Driving became a disease and organic became the big O. Not just that. The humble brown bread that we pushed around the dining table had become the most expensive item on the table, while the Pilsbury doughboy sat forlornly in the corner. Besides which we were paying an arm and a leg to live the way the earlier generation had lived, without spending a paisa! We even paid designer money for designer jute bags! Had the world turned mad?

As we discovered, it was us. We had turned into global goons, rejecting everything sensible and earth-friendly that was actually part of our heritage and lost our place as eco-citizens.

Like many others, I too am scrambling to get a foothold back into the process of simple natural living. We may not succeed, but perhaps our kids will learn the way we once did from generations before us.