DilliMeriJaan

  Follow greenhumour.com for some sensible stuff I decided to watch Masterchef Australia and discover what the world has been raving about for the past 11 years. To keep up with the times, I started with the latest season. And halfway through, had to stop – I had no more hair left to pull out!  Millions of people go hungry across the world, because 30% food gets wasted and Masterchef showed me how the number is higher in fancy kitchens. Agri-food sector is the highest carbon emitter and if we start cooking the way Masterchefs do, the damage would be higher. And then there is plastic and much much more. Here are cringe-inducing things, that I saw: 1.       Sous Vide - you put stuff into plastic and dunk into a boiler. So along with the slowly poached food, you can get your fill of microplastic. Have you ever heated food inside a plastic container? 2.      Blast chiller – you boil stuff and immediately shove them into blast chiller...

My metro-riding, super ecological conscious husband succumbed to peer pressure once. He joined in the mindlessness of cracker bursting and hasn’t celebrated a single Diwali, ever since, not regretting it. No one on this page bursts crackers, I am certain. But have some of us kept quiet or even gingerly swirled a phuljhadi or two, because its tough to stand up and say NO, especially when its your family? (By the way, Phuljhadi is one of the MOST polluting of crackers that there is…)   That fateful night of lapsed reasoning, was in my in-law’s house. The whole family was bursting crackers and apparently enjoying the toxic air. I remember standing in the balcony, glaring and refusing to participate. Today, my parents in-law have a solar panel installed, lead a very conscious zero waste life and wouldn’t dream of pumping in fumes into their children/grand-childrens’ lungs.  It is easy to dial 100 and complain about a neighbour bursting crackers. But its TOUGH when its your ...

 The first gift we bought for our daughter, when she was a few days old, was a book. It was made of cloth and acted as a pillow, plaything and teether later. When she became old enough to sit and turn rather than eat pages, we were in parental heaven. There were so many Tulika books (https://www.tulikabooks.com/) with splendid Indian art, designed by fancy designers from NID, and told by village people who have kept storytelling alive over bedtimes and their version of fireside chats. My friends, significant other and I spent hours browsing these in shops, ostensibly for daughter. Daughter grew up drawing, singing, playing sports with her dad – skills I do not possess so could only clap on the side.   Reading continued, but our common interest of Tulika now gave way to she reading whatever her friends were and I to whatever Reese Witherspoon/Bill Gates was. Like all daughters, she had to read what her father did so suddenly both were chatting Sci-fi and I had nothing to cont...

Dragonflies have been around for 300 million years, making them one of the oldest winged insects in the world. Their size has decreased over the centuries, apparently with the decrease of oxygen in the atmosphere. They need chemical free water to breed and decent air quality to survive. So get happy if you see dragonflies around you – it’s a fair indication that the air you are breathing is good. The UN is observing the first World Clean Air Day today, looking at that more than 7 million lives are lost per year, due to toxic air. As Antonio Guterres makes heart-felt appeals to governments and industries to clean up their act before we all die, what should you and I do? It is frustrating to wait for coal to be phased out and manufacturing units to reduce carbon intensive production, while poison steadily seeps into us [aargh…the vivid imagery of it]. My friend who uses only Metro, just bought an EV for those non-metro-able rare trips. My father-in-law installed solar. Wh...

Everyone has discovered their inner Anthony Bourdain, during the lockdown. I also tried and baked bread, as a change from boiled vegetables and rice – a big family favourite and am now seeing why. My first clue should have been that I had to use a large cleaver and ‘chop’ the bread! The family was ecstatic when we went back to boiled vegetable rice. People have also discovered all kinds of other hidden talents. I don’t have opposable thumbs so can’t do stuff which require fine motor skills. Ok I HAVE opposable thumbs, but they aren’t opposabling as much as they should. It’s a thing. I checked on google. So that left me with oodles of post-work time, which I didn’t want to spend on TV/other multimedia. What with decreasing grey cells and increasing grey hair – couldn’t take a chance. Instead of twiddling my semi opposable thumbs, I just had to step up the reading – from 2 books per week to at least 3. Like a good sandwich, a reading list should have intermittent heavy duty non-fiction...

Irrawady Dolphins have been calling me since Ghosh wrote ‘Hungry Tide’. I finally managed to visit Sundarbans, many months after the almost-sequel ‘Gun Island’. I did not see any dolphins but saw many other fascinating beings, including our boat man. Every day, we set out on a steamer ride and watched the water go down, exposing the roots of the mangroves in a very spectacular, and sometimes eerie, manner. By the time we came back the roots would go under water – the short trees standing out of the river, as though they’d gone in for a quick dip.  Boat man lived in a neighbouring village, had studied till class 10 before joining this resort and was an Amitav Ghosh fan. He didn’t speak English or Hindi so I tried translating his stories to the rest of our gang, real time. Bon-bibi and Shah Junglee, Collared Kingfisher and Estuarine Crocodile, Bee keepers, how the tiger survives the salty water. He knew it all and after some time I stopped translating. I realised the gang was just st...

Armed with Anjum Hassan’s ‘Lunatic in my head’ and my significant other’s memories of growing up in Shillong, I went into the city, expecting Pink Floyd on everyone’s lips and rolling hills in quick succession. In our house, all good things are benchmarked against those in Shillong. This was my first visit to Shillong and these are my list of it's good things -    Umgot Lake – the National Geographic photos of the clear waters, and the boat appearing to be suspended in mid-air, have made this lake very popular. Heaps of tourists, a lot of them Bengalis, arrive here every day, exclaiming loudly about the water and its clarity. And heaps of Bengalis from the other side of the border, stand in a silent row, watching them with amazement and amusement. The India-Bangladesh border is menacingly divided by a stone on the beach saying ‘Do not cross Border’.   None of the Bangladeshis seem interested to. They have way too much fun watching the squawking tourists from their...

Recently we had student council interviews in my school, which I had to miss thanks to the high levels of pollution. I am especially upset since I finally had the answer to the question ‘Why should we select you’. Perhaps you would like to hear the answer. ‘Ma’am, Sir. I believe you should select me because I am not afraid of being unpopular. I say and do what I know for a fact, rather than following a herd doing wrong things. Don’t get me wrong – I am not stubborn or egoistic. I welcome opinions and am happy to be corrected. But mostly, I do whatever I understand to be right. The interesting thing is that doing the ‘right’ thing is always logical – based on common sense. Throwing rubbish out of the school bus instead of waiting for 10 minutes and putting it in a dustbin, makes no sense. Buying plastic bottles of water and drinking ‘nano plastic’ is illogical as it’s dangerous for our health, not just the planet’s. [ I recently learnt this on the WWF website – whi...