Problem of plenty idiots

You can't really talk about environmental degradation if you own a car and haven't planted a sapling in over 200 years. Similarly, you can't take a higher ground (if you are a guy) on Sunny Leone's morality while you enjoy her porn. Similarly, you can't lecture on feminism (if you are a girl) when all you want to do is upload DPs with your cleavage on show. These are the tricky spots of taking a stand. You can't be swinging when the issues at hand are of grave nature. If you do, you are fundamentally making a fool out of yourself and delaying progress as well. One such issue happens to be the wastage of food. Nearly 40% of all the food on the planet goes to gutter. If you reading this, i'm sure you'll be well aware of the scale of wastage. I'm sure there has to be somebody in your group of friends who is known for wasting food. But what about you? Does wastage have to be of grand scale to be noted? It begins with morning tea when you choose to leave those last drops of tea in the cup. You never bothered to ask yourself why exactly you do that. Is it a matter of establishing your status? Especially when you know that the tea is strained and doesn't have tea filaments settled at the bottom of the cup. So, what makes you do that? Does it have something to do with your narcissism that you want to have a mirror inside the cup too? 

OK, this was breakfast. 

Let's move on to lunch or dinner.  

I don't understand two Indian aspects of eating:  

1. Why take more food on your plate than required? 

2. Why waste it? 

How difficult is to avoid these two conditions when we all know there are not only kids but also adults dying of hunger in India (no, you don't have travel all the way to Africa when there is a shameful reality closer home)? I don't think we as a nation have reached that stage where we can pretend to face the problem of plenty. Not yet. The reason why i take a stand here is i haven't wasted food since the age of seven. Whoever i grew up with or spent considerable amount of time with over the years can vouch for me. I neither waste nor let others do. The credit goes to my dad who turned into a villain when it was required. I was in second grade and i remember once taking more than needed on my plate. Because of my insouciance, he did something drastic: he didn't let me get up from the floor (yes, we didn't have a dining table back then) without me eating my food. "Anna da maryadi...blah blah..." [Where's your respect for the grain of rice?] I stuffed myself as much as i could before breaking down and weeping. At the end of the drama, the plate was clean and i received a lesson for life while my ma smiled at my not-so-funny status. 

NB. Years later, my friend Rojel expressed his hedonistic opinion that food is going to waste whether you eat it or not. He was taking a microscopic view—metaphorically as well as literally—of the situation because he could afford to. Those who go to sleep hungry won't take a peek into his microscope. 

Padhe likhe anpadh

Don't you just hate it when you view people on the street litter, spit and abuse public places? Ditto. Guess what? It's worse when you see them do the same from the confines of their four walls. The thing is we Indians like to keep our home clean and streets untidy. There are so many instances around us where people casually throw rubbish out of their window and don't even care to check whether it hit somebody walking on the road outside. Indians would do anything to keep their new-found traditions alive.

Case study: Last night, i was returning home tired from Nashik and it was quite late. I was about four buildings away from ours when a banana peel landed right in front of me—about three feet away. The ironical part was somebody from that very building could have unassumingly slipped on the slippery slip in the morning. Anyway, i looked up as anybody who believes in God would do. From the open window and the functioning tubelight, it was patent that the banana skin flew from that house on the second floor. I used to play cricket once so it wasn't too high for me. I could have easily thrown the peels back into the window—if not on the first attempt, then at least on the fifth. However, i changed my mind at the last moment. Instead, i opened the gate and walked up the stairs despite feeling terribly weary. On ringing the bell of the 'guilty' house, a tall man in lungi opened the door. Before he could ask anything i said "This must be yours. You left it downstairs" in Hindi, before handing him the abandoned banana skin. I was prepared for denial but he didn't say anything. He simply took my offer, looked at his window and pulled a face. I wanted to take out my unrelated frustration by lecturing him: "Padhe likhe log aisa karenge toh anpadhon se kya ummeed karna?" But there was no need for it.