Organic Thoughts and a GPS

I happen to have some mail conversations and chats with some of my friends regarding my hometown, global warming, organic food, GPS ,maps etc. and this made me think about my own life style change.

The other day I was travelling using the GPS application in my phone. I had to stop for lunch but I forgot to turn the GPS off. I went to the rest room first and as soon as I entered the rest room, the GPS said ‘Turn left….’ and that was kind of embarrassing. I wasn’t using GPS to find where exactly the urinal is but it sounded like that.

These days we use GPS system to find almost every place- like to find a place of worship, post office, rest area, hotel, beach, pizzeria, gas station, mall,…There was no GPS during my childhood and I have not seen anybody using any kind of maps either, to travel. Till I came to US I had not used even a road map to move around (but yes, I had collected some route directions from those who have already been to those places). When we send a search request to find an ATM near us, we don’t even realize that we are sending signals to 4 or more satellites which are thousands of miles away. I have experience of losing way even while travelling with the help of a GPS. This made me wonder about world travellers like Monk Hsuan Tsang who successfully travelled from China to India over a thousand years ago…The three wise men (probably astrologers) travelled hundreds of miles to see Jesus, 2000 years ago…Later, Jesus Christ travelled all the way to India without GPS…amazing.

(They all took help from the sun, moon , stars and the earth’s magnetic field, I know.. but still it is amazing)

Had to tell one of my friends how my native city was some 40 years ago. The tap water was potable and we never even heard of water filter or any such purifying system. Water from the wells tasted great and it never gave any diarrhea, though it was natural home for many insects. Bottled water did not even exist in my place, that time. The air was cleaner and I don’t know whether ‘pure oxygen’ was sold in pharmacy stores like they do these days.

Couple of times, I heard President Obama speaking of the importance of investing in cleaner energy sources. I do not know whether this talk was because of the pressure to stop the oil wars. We had used firewood based ovens for cooking (from firewood to kerosene was a big upgrade that time). Was that a prehistoric way of cooking? Then how come traditional BBQ is still modern and civilized?

‘Don’t forget to switch off the lights during earth hour”…..

We never had any special hour for earth during my childhood, though we loved mother earth. Our tradition taught us to consider earth as a goddess as well as our mother. I happen to see that some of the pathway lights here are on 24/7. And it was surprising for me to see that many corporates here keep hundreds of lights on even during weekends/holidays (when nobody is working). We had very little electrical equipment during my childhood. That table fan of ours was a luxury and we mainly used it when we had guests. It looks like my dad never used an electric iron in his entire life. He ironed his cloths using a traditional coal based iron box till his last days.

We used to grind kitchen stuffs manually – like rice, green gram, black gram etc. We made dough and batter using our hands (with the help of grinding stones etc …there are some other traditional stuffs but I don’t know its name in English) and not with any blender or mixer. We kids ran to grocery stores making vroooom sound assuming that we are driving a car or a motor bike. We walked to school and used bus or taxi only when we had to travel more than 2 miles (or so, or when there is an urgency/emergency). During my childhood I never even thought of machines that could wash and dry cloths. We washed our cloths and dishes with our hands (this I did till I came to US. Here in US, there is no washing soap – we can find it in Asian stores). There weren’t any obese kids in our school (except some from rich families). And hence there weren’t any juvenile diabetes caused by obesity. Kids, parents and even grandparents, everybody did some natural ‘exercise’ every day as part of our day to day activity.. When I was 6 years old, I was able to and used to walk to school which was 3 miles away… Gyms were only for those who are very serious about body building and they were hard to find..

By the way, will switching off lights for one hour save this planet? I asked couple of people in what way this helps prevent global warming and I did not get any proper answer. Yes, it is symbolic and may be it has some chain/cascading effects too but many a times for some people and organizations it is just a fad. Somebody said ‘the heat from the bulb…’ Well, if that is the case, look at this – here in US, most of the cars turn on headlights even during day time. This means a million headlights turned on during day time, very single day (personally I found this useful while driving in freeways) which definitely can increase the atmospheric temperature.

Carbon dioxide is considered (by many ‘scientific people’ and organizations) as the main greenhouse gas. After seeing the US lifestyle, I asked myself this question – where does the carbon dioxide from the carbonated drinks go? Why this aspect is not at all considered as an environmental issue? Here people empty tons of gallons of soda and beer every day. There is no US without soda and beer. It is the same with many European countries. At this point, we need to look into one thing – how many global warming research organizations got funds from soda companies?

Why is China (and India) ALWAYS blamed for CO2 related issues? Even the USA flags we get here in US stores are made in China ! Go to any store here and we find less than 5% ‘Made in USA’ items. Out of that 95%, 80-90% is Chinese products. This means China has lots of industries and factories. US is a capitalist nation and they never want to help a communist country (the Vietnam War is a proof). So?

So, it is clear that this happened so because of corporate vested interest to boost profits by utilizing China’s cheap labor, infrastructure cost and other production costs and not- so- strong environmental laws. If industries in China are polluting the environment, it is for and because of the corporates and MNCs from the west (And this policy is one of the major reasons for the current recession in US). If I have a factory in another country that is polluting the environment, whom should I blame, myself or that country and its people?

So, CO2 is a big problem? Look at the creation. The creator created both plants and animals. Animals breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO2. Plants take CO2 and gives out oxygen…awesome. That means, if we are facing issues related to excess CO2, it also means we need more natural plants and trees (not plastic ones).

Plastic wasn’t a big player during my childhood. I never had a plastic lunch box. We had more of stainless steel, aluminum and copper utensils. We had aluminum ‘school bags’ (box shaped)and metallic pencil boxes.

How did we buy milk, 40 years ago? Some families had cows at home. They used to sell excess milk and we go to their house with some stainless steel utensil. Or, milkmen used to come to our place and he pours milk into what utensil we hand him over to, which usually were stainless steel or aluminum. Then it became glass bottles. These glass bottles were re-usable. Same was the case with soft drinks. There was coke and Fanta during my childhood too but they all were in glass bottles and not in plastic bottles. We used to carry cloth bags to market or grocery stores. Veggies were directly put into those bags and grocery items were packed in paper bags. We hardly used any insecticides and chemical fertilizers. I myself had a small kitchen garden where I had a kind of pea, tomato, green chili, eggplant, ladies finger, yam, plantain/banana etc (and rose, jasmine, shoe flower etc ).

So, 40 years back, I was eating organic food almost every day? I did not know how lucky I were during that time. After all these years of scientific developments and new food pyramids, now we are asked to stay away from genetically modified foods and grab organic ones ….

Years passed and passed....And now? Limiting the use of electric and electronic equipments, daily walking and exercise, organic food, eating more fruits and veggies, going organic, avoiding plastic, car pooling, cotton shirts, handmade soaps and other goods, herbal, natural and alternative medicine, Yoga... what the..?

It is nothing but going back to the roots but at a cost with a strange price tag.