An issue
as serious as environment is a pretty fashionable subject
among Indian chattering classes which keep track of Fashion
Weeks in Delhi to see which designer this year makes the
best environment-conscious dress with some grapes dangling
alongside the curves. In Chandigarh, the administration
suddenly realized how the polythene was actually the WMD
lurking at its subzi mandis, unbeknown to Bush, and they
banned it. A notification was issued. The Times of India’s
Resident Editor at Chandigarh was also in love with
fashionable causes. In any case, the middle class now loves
to go to the swank malls where polythenes are a strict
no-no. To save the environment, I assume.
The newspaper went into a campaigning mode on the issue. Everyday a number of inane stories started appearing. I asked whether the new law will mean possession of polythene will be unlawful. “So, will we have policemen stationed at Chandigarh’s borders with Punjab who will stop the bus and ask the old women to throw out the lifafa before entering Chandigarh?”
Sridhar said I was being a cynic. I was. If you waste reams of newsprint discussing how swimwear calendars were shot, have offices in basements to save real estate investment and then run AC’s for 16 hours a day but tell the old woman from Mansa that the lifafa she is carrying is making the planet warm and she must throw it away at once, you too would turn a cynic. Ask hundreds of old men and women who visit the Punjab Civil Secretariat everyday to get Rs 200 per month old age pension, their ration cards carefully wrapped in some polythene and tucked in the inside vest pocket. Without the polythene, they wouldn’t know how to keep the crucial document secure. But what is that small sacrifice if editors want to rid the world, or at least Chandigarh, of WMD? There are others who are carpet bombing whole countries for the purpose.
But like Either-You-Are-With-Us-Or-You-Are-Against-Us presidents, editors also don’t give up easily. The TOI started an SMS based slogan coining campaign in the newspaper pages. Schools started sending little kids with anti-lifafa slogans to newspaper offices. Emboldened, the editor told me that I would have to write a piece as my contribution to the campaign.
I wrote the following piece. It mentioned Sridhar also. He wasn’t very sure whether it was in his favour or against him. “It is against Bush,” I responded when he asked me after the piece was published. He didn’t seem convinced. Read the piece to see what lifafe-baazi happens when it comes to serious issues like environment. Who won’t like to ogle at grapes dangling from curves? That too in the larger interest of the society!
Of Plastic in breasts,
and WMDs in subzi-market
Raise a voice against lifafe-baazi
S P Singh
Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you - just one word.
Ben: Yes sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben: Yes I am.
Mr. McGuire: 'Plastics.'
Ben: Exactly what do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Ben: Yes I will.
Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That's a deal.
Sixties, Beatles, flower generation and plastics, they all came together. Almost hand in hand. Barbie had already arrived in 1959, and it was plastic. And everyone said fantastic. And then came The Graduate. One of the key, ground-breaking films of the late 1960s, an influential biting satire about Ben, an alienated college grad adrift amid shifting social and sexual mores of the ’60s.
The single dialogue about ‘plastics’ became one of the most memorable lines from film history and anti-plasticism exploded onto the world stage.
But plastic spilled all over us. Even Beatles cut their records on the vinyl discs. Much later, a generation of young men was still being traumatised by the giant inflatable plastic breast in Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. And too much plastic continuously kept creeping into sex all the time. At times the partner was only plastic. Inflatable.
Many were still not saying “No”.
Hippies were almost a reaction to plasticism. Those who wanted to escape plastic ideology, plastic smiles, plastic stance in life, plastic thoughts were becoming hippies. Then came the ultimate. The plastic Dum Maro Dum hippie.
The ‘real’ hippie had deeper illusions, had acquired his mystifications in their pure organic form. The ‘plastic’ one bought them packaged. Astrology in a poster, natural freedom in bellbottoms, Taoism from the Beatles. There was no escaping plastic.
Among those who pumped the plastic dream when Herr Hitler was trying to sell super race dream were Yarsley and Couzens, waxing lyrically about a future in which ‘Plastics Man’ would be born into ‘a world of colour and shining surfaces’. “As an adult, he would live in a house that is a 'universal plastic environment’ with an all-plastic bathroom, moulded plastic furniture and beautified with plastic lampshades and vases.”
What they didn’t tell us was that after enjoying a retirement fitted with plastic dentures and playing with plastic chessmen, there would be so much non-biodegradable of the stuff left that he would have to sink into his grave, much sooner than required, hygienically enclosed in a plastic coffin.
By this time, I had deduced that the entire opposition to plastics was plastic, and I saw the Chandigarh babudom's stance on polybags through the same prism. "So bus drivers would stop at the Mohali-Chandigarh and Panchkula-Chandigarh borders and ask the hunchbacked old woman to throw the lifafa out of the window?" I was sure I was making sense.
But my editor went ballistic against plastic, deployed the SMS technology to widen the front and then came the final assault on my cynicism. Generation Real Next, not the plastic GenNext, came calling. Little kids, as young as three year olds, also cast their lot with the editor as they trooped into the office mouthing slogans against smelly plastic.
Pragmatically, I converted. And like any new convert, my fist against plastic is clenched tighter. Many a time in history, a step has been symbolic of a movement. So as the citizens shun the polybag, may be deep inside could a resolve solidify to say no to plastic. No to a plastic smile, no to a plastic nose, a plastic ideological position to suit the imminent moment.
During 2003 Christmas season, Bush W had sent plastic turkey to the troops. Now we know why.
Now we are alive to the plastic threat.
Who knows our no to the plastic polybag may take us to dizzying heights, triggering a movement against inventing plastic WMD and then concocting plastic reasons for war? Many have often complained that while Chandigarh is so beautiful, the city sometimes seems too stifling because there are so many plastic people. A journalist friend even complained that while in his village in Mansa, the stray dog was called 'Kaalu' and was loved by everyone, Chandigarhians were giving plastic names to their pups.
I agree. I called out to Ginger last night, howling, "Kaalu!" She came in, wagging her tail. It seemed she liked it.
Fine, no plastic. No plastic names even. This time, unabashedly, say “Never Again.”
"I will not lug around a plastic bag. I will not teach my newborn a plastic smile." Okay fine, don't call your dog Kaalu. Movements against an empire can also begin from a lifafa. They don't have to wait till the third bloom of Dahlia.
December 22, 2005