Saturday, April 15, 2006

An Unseeming Topic

I got on the train from Rajnandgaon, a city in Chattisgarh, India at around 12:30pm on the 30th day of March 2006. I was visiting my Dadi (Grandma) in a prompt decision. Wishing the journey to be exciting if not amazing, I bid farewell to the city.
Drowsily I climbed into the upper berth, a number 43 and tried to sleep in this one baking oven.
Giving up after a while, I sat up to see Mr.48, probably heading for Pune too (in our very own Azad Hind Express), starting to unpack his lunch. And lo, Behold! I saw a new innovative thing that he took out of his travelling bag.
Oh! So well designed, like any other design by man, the great Creator. An object of desire, a must have for all travellers; in fact the railways should give one free with each sleeper ticket.
Oh! What a lovely piece of Art, better fit to be nailed on the Wall. No not the innovation, but the head of the freak who came up with this. How am I writing Odes to this blasphemous, anti-appetizer and what not – of all the things in the world à a disposable ‘Thali’?
I believe man leaves no tables turned to see the complete and thorough destruction of Nature. Of all the things that one would or one could come up with, a disposable plastic Thali!
Where did it all start? Where did we go wrong? How have these plastics come to dominate and command over our miserable lives? Can we not move on, out of this dislikeable, disgusting and do-awayable, ecological disaster, a complete bad design, a disease worse than consumption of the 1800s, a self inflicted injury that is surreptiously closing in on us, like that, that which man fears most.....
.....death.
Something that a poet said...
"The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armor against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade."
...............James Shirley

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