Caring two hoots for the rules and norms the HP cabinet on 27 September, has signed the death warrant for the tea gardens; and as news reports say one influential owner of Dharamsala is the immediate and direct beneficiary. What a shame! What arrogance! What abuse of power and  authority! Have  the sane and sensible people of HP, the environmentalists, the NGOs, all gone to sleep? Will the leaders of opposition rise to the occasion, protest and oppose this? Will they promise to nullify this deed if voted to power? Will the HP High Court take suo moto notice of this blatant violation of rules by the govt to appease a powerful teagarden owner and not let it get away with this? Will some good Samaritan file a PIL? I hope and pray that something happens and this disaster-wrapped-in-tragedy is averted.

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Plastic wins and our good old leafplates (पत्तल ) lose out

Are the days of relishing the Kangri dham served by the dhoti-clad boti and his team on fresh, green leaf-plates (पत्तल) now over? Days, when on a neat and clean, cow-dung plastered, sunny courtyard, we squatted in rows and slurped steamy hot madras, dals and the khatta?  Well, more or less, yes. Over the years, those absolutely lovely, inviting and health-safe leaf-plates have given way to ugly plastic plates: simply because plastic plates are cheaper and easy to get from the market and so convenient to use. (Cheaper yes; convenient by all means; but what are the health costs?) And to make the whole picture thoroughly revolting, instead of those open courtyards in the rapidly urbanizing countryside we now have the shamiana-canopied grounds covered with those dirty, dusty, grimy, over-used and utterly unhygienic,  green ‘carpet-spreads’ where we sit and eat out of the plastic plates.  Plastic, I hardly need emphasize and repeat, is carcinogenic; the low grade type but cost-effective used for plates/thalis etc. even more so. Secondly, plastic, being non-biodegradable, is an abominably notorious environment polluter. Plastic discards uglify our hill slopes, forests, khuds, kuhls, roadsides and even the pristine wildernesses of our beautiful countryside. They pollute our soil, water and air, and garbage dumps with plastic leftovers attract monkeys, stray dogs, birds and vermin; cows end up having their guts choked with plastic. (No wonder that much to the alarm of scientists, large chunks of polluting plastic have been discovered  far up at the North Pole. The fear is that when ice melts, this plastic will be released into the Arctic ocean.) But the sad fact is that despite this awareness and knowledge about the hazards of plastic, we, the urban elite, caught in the rat race, our life’s priorities topsy-turvied by greed, life of ease, and a mad scramble for materialistic gains at all costs, use plastic with gay abandon for the weddings and all other kinds of celebratory occasions without a second’s thought about the hazards and damage we are inflicting on our environment and society. 
Now coming back to our vanishing leaf-plates, though I don’t claim any scientific evidence, I have a personal theory howsoever fallacious, silly and ludicrous that perhaps the leaf-plates also soak some of the extra oil and fat that our dhams have in good measure – while plastic can’t and doesn’t – and help you enjoy your dham without accumulating an overdose of unwanted calories and life-threatening cholesterol.

In short, as the news report in The Tribune (25 September 2017) indicates, we are not just being callous about our own health and hostile to the environment, we are also driving the men and women of our villages who make those leaf-plates, out of their livelihood. If the present trend continues, there will  be no hands left to make those plates and gradually this  tradition will be lost forever. Let us therefore, reverse this unhealthy drift and switch back to the old practice by taking a little extra trouble to procure and use our good old pattals for our feasts, weddings and parties.Happy, healthy (dham) eating!          

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