Once having breakfast in the mess hall of my college hostel, we were served in plastic plates and glasses. I looked at one of the mess workers inquisitively. “Water problem,” he said with a smile.
The Jat agitation had led to a break in water supply for two days, and the hostellers were asked to use water sparingly. But what could be done in the mess to save water? “Use disposables till water supply resumes,” was the response.
One could sense that the mess workers were relaxed while we ate as they would not have to wash the plates and tumblers. If there could be any disposable invention for cooking vessels, I am sure the same would have been used.
After every meal, one could see a huge pile of disposable plates, glasses and spoons in the dustbin. As I stared at the spoon which bent every time I took a spoonful of rice, I began recalling places where I had eaten in such plastic disposables; places where they were not so common a few years ago.
Remember the times when you went out to have pani puri or chaat at a roadside stall. The shopkeeper gave you a steel plate or bowl, and while you waited for your turn holding it, you constantly stared at the pile of dirty ones.
“Did he wash them properly before giving it to another customer,” you wondered and looked closely at your own.
“Looks fine,” you said to yourself as you wiped the excess water from its surface.
Sometimes, instead of steel plates or bowls, donas and pattals (bowls and plates made of leaves of the flame-of-the-forest tree) are used. They were used commonly before the plastic disposables replaced them.
Every year, at the end of the Ganesh Puja season, an afternoon feast is organised in the colony I grew up in. The delicious food used to be served in donas and pattals as we sat on long mats and ate.
After I left my city for higher education, I had the feast recently after a long time. Nostalgia gave way to amusement, as donas and pattals were not to be seen. Plastic plates — believe me, they were so thin it was like eating on the floor — replaced them. I could not imagine anything thinner than that to eat on. I could feel the floor surface on my finger tips as I ate. And as I sadly crumbled my plate to throw it outside, I could not but get exasperated looking at the huge pile of plastic waste falling out of the already full dustbins.
We lived in a city which is a major railway junction in central India. So we had a lot of relatives and family friends crossing the city frequently and we were expected to carry food along as we went to meet them at the station. We lost a lot of tiffin boxes and water bottles to them. Some of them were generous enough to return them in their next visit, but not all. So one day, my father returned from the market with a bag of disposable plastic boxes.
“We do not have to care about them returning it anymore,” he said. However, very soon, we all began to carry food in them during our journeys. Who will wash vessels while travelling, just use and dispose!
Use and dispose: A comfortable and “hygienic” solution. Sounds as if, one has not just disposed them of from their lives but from the planet itself. I wonder should they be called disposables or uncontrollables!
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