Sustainable Development: Can Tata Photon help?

I didn't mean to be hesitant about naming this post. But I never really thought I would have such an official sounding post either.

The thing is, over the last couple of months or so, people around me can't stop talking about recycling. Reusable waste. Like?

1. Nek Chand's Rock Garden in Chandigarh.
2. Last year's hard-bound exercise books being piled onto the floor at the school where I teach.
3. My grandfather's car, with its sensitive wipers raised like canine hackles when the rains come unannounced. Someone washes it everyday and gets paid for it.
4. The Himalayan Village at Sonapani, an eco-friendly resort. Solar panels for sale at the small local shop on the way back to the Kathgodam Railway Station.
5. Ravi Gulati, our fellow camper at Sonapani and co-founder of the NGO, Manzil, and his presentation titled "The Story of Stuff".
6. A sudden dearth of plastic bags all around me, except the khaarbooja waale bhaiya (fruit vendor) near my house. (Yes, I was happy he had a carry-bag.. so sue me.)
7. Endless Rituporno Ghosh Bong movies with names like Utsab (Festival), Noukadubi (Boatwreck), Abohomaan (The Flow) where someone or the other must face the herculean task of getting over a slowpoke and involve the audience in the long, arduous entrails of the entire process of "moving on".
8. An ex-colleague, talking about my ex-company and x amounts of barley. Read beer.

But that's not the point now, is it?

The point is, I desire of becoming a person who has no emotional excesses and simply moves around randomly like a gas molecule. It strikes me as odd now that scenes from movies that my parents called classics seldom have the impact on me that they promised. It strikes me as odd that when I talk to someone who once held a special place in my heart, unknown to myself, I skip details and forget to mention events which I cannot deny to be important in my life. I remember them the moment I hang up. And yet, something tells me that I hadn't forgotten in the first place and that it was simply, a well organised conversation. Nothing I would regret later. No loose ends. No way back? Maybe.

Now I call that cleaning up my act. I will allow myself a moment's envy of my cousins who have a full-fledged flaming episode of OCD that they can recognise and report. Washing helps. Cleaning my clothes, my room, my floor. Realising that I have far too many blacks in my wardrobe and wearing yellow to work with perfect nonchalance. Relying on melons for dinner. A colourful shirt for a dazzling summer.

Knowing that I can provoke without regret. I can offer myself for company without letting my passive-aggressive tendencies take over.

I can sustain this. I can turn the page.

Somewhere, something I read in Linda Goodman's description of the Capricorn woman comes back and haunts me. Apparently, this woman can look into the eyes of a frog and see a beautiful prince instead. Funny how Ms. Goodman skipped the steps that led her to this. Like Annie Lennox sings.. there's an open door in my room.. and it didn't just get there by itself.

You know?