Ah! The fragrance of boiled groundnuts

Groundnut seller, Richmond Town, Dec 2014

One of our favourite childhood snacks. Ever so often dad would bring home these big newspaper cones filled with kadalaikai, that he’d have bought from a pushcart doing a round of the neighbourhood. As soon as he entered the door, the room would be filled with a fragrance like no other. I wish I could catch that smell and put it on the page to linger.

Waste Management Diaries – 2 (Plastic bags/ wrapping)

When we talk of plastic, what comes to mind? Quite likely a plastic bag. 

Plastic carry bags are banned in Mumbai. Even then, plastic bags and other plastic wrapping continue to play a major role in our lives.

• Food stuff – bread, biscuits, chips, toffees, cereal, rice, dhals, sauce packets, packaged vegetables, dosa batter, milk packets …
• Household supplies – toothbrushes, detergent powders, shampoo sachets …
• Bubble wrap, medicine blister packs, gift wrapping, clothes packaging …

These and much more, all contribute to the plastic bag/ wrapper waste we are generating on a daily basis.     

Discouraging disposables at Lokhandwala Foundation School fun fair

At some point over the past few years, it is quite likely that you would have heard about the problems created by the ever increasing mounds of garbage in our neighbourhoods and/or the villages where our urban rubbish is being dumped. The harm to the environment, climate change, plastic cows, dead turtles, our health, contaminated water, flash floods …

Of course, with the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission a year ago, we are constantly reminded about keeping our neighbourhoods and country clean. Apart from not littering our public spaces, anyone with common sense would directly relate this to what we throw out each day, from each of our homes – things that we could actually have done without, and which would need to go through the recycling process to save them from ending up in landfills or some unsuspecting creature’s stomach.

But do we really? Disposable carry bags for example. (Pics: internet)

The dilemma of roadside vending

Location: Lokhandwala Circle, Kandivali East, Mumbai

Two policemen, seated in a police van (Bolero), with beacon, et al, on patrol. The van is conspicious as it crawls up the road, stopping every few metres, and disrupting the traffic while doing so. I see it during one such stop, with a vegetable vendor at its window, handing notes to the policeman seated next to the driver. Everyone around seems to be looking away, but both the policeman and the vendor see that I have seen. It is the vendor who looks uncomfortable, while the policeman looks through me as if I do not exist, and the vulture van moves forward to its next prey.

“Is that money that you gave to the policeman?” I ask the vendor.

His vegetable shop, well equipped for the monsoons with a blue tarpaulin sheet, is set up with a large table right in the place where the footpath should be. People who are walking are forced onto the road while negotiating the corner he occupies. He is not alone. There are others in this corner, where a new footpath is yet to be laid after recent road concreting.

This is an aerial, night-time view of “The corner”. The blue tarpaulin is the policemen’s noted victim. Note where the pedestrians walk.

Of garbage and plastic bag alternatives

Bangalore has come a long way since this message I had posted on the ZWM-Blr google group <zwm-blr@googlegroups.com> in Sept 2010, about biodegradable plastic bags.

“About one-and-a-half years ago (meaning in early 2009), at Brigade Millennium Mayflower, we decided to go with green-colour biodegradable garbage bags for chute-disposal of garbage.

After a few months, we discontinued buying the biodegradable bags because –