We pack our children’s school bag, doubly
ensuring that they do not leave behind the two essentials: the lunch bag and
the water bottle. But do we carry a water bottle when we leave the house? Why bother. All we have to do is part with Rs
12 or Rs 15, depending on the “brand” of pure water, and we get to quench our
thirst in “convenient” plastic bottles, stocked in every corner shop in the
country. Right? Wrong!
We need to bother as the bottles we use and
throw are all out in its bio-non degradable form, choking our planet’s dump
yard. Recently, my friend had sent a picture of a heritage site buried under a
mound of plastic water bottles. That was just a fragment of the bigger time
bomb merrily ticking away in our planet.
Will it be simpler to just fill up a bottle
whenever we step out? Just our little bit. I have heard people say, what
difference does it make if one person does it? What about the rest? Someone has
to start somewhere.
This sounds pedagogical? Sorry, cannot help
it.
Today, drinking water flow freely at large
conclaves and conferences, small gatherings, fat weddings and family functions through mini packaged plastic
bottles. What is even more frustrating is when even quarter-used bottles are
binned. This is double whammy: drinking water flows into the drain and more
plastic is added to the planet.
Our fitness freaks run marathons, well-advertised
and sponsored by corporates, and leave behind a monstrous clutter of plastic
water sachets, making our planet that much more unfit.
The world water day is on March 22 to
remind us of the resource that is getting scarily scarce. But we do not seem to
just get it. We start rationing water when there is a red alert on scarcity. Once
the dark cloud passes, we resume scrubbing vessels leaving the tap on. We do
not tell our children not to turn on the tap during the process of brushing
their teeth, but only to rinse. Our children have enough and more of television
and ipods; they can do without the water music as they wake up or before they
slip into slumber. We indulge in the Jacuzzi-type shower (like we see those jaw-dropping
men and women in ads). We scrub and wash our cars like they are hitting a night
club. We water the pathway like there was a storm the previous night. We mercilessly
throw the water filled up in our buckets two days back when there would have
been a water crisis warning, saying it is “old”.
The water bomb’s ticking;tick, tick, tick. It is time to wake up to this alarm.
