Fast Food

Fast food

He arrived at his assigned spot in the market carrying a big bundle on a brass tray on his head and  a wicker stand under an arm. Then he  placed the wicker stand on the footpath and the brass tray on top of it.

 this brass plate he arranged an assortment of eatables. There  was a heap of fried corn too

I had been waiting for his spicy fried corns. He used to come in the afternoon and remain till shops closed .

He proceeded to attend to me. On a large leaf he placed half a cup  of fried whole corn and mixed it with a few masala powders and pastes . Then he squeezed a few drops of lemon over it and handed me this garlic flavoured concoction. It was inexpensive and quite tasty.

That was one of the fast foods of my childhood days. There was no maggi or burger or pizza then. Peanuts,  Roasted chana , puffed rice Laiya or fried or roasted desi pop corn called makki were popular with roadside venders. Some of them sold pani Puri (golgappas) too. 

Fast food joints, loaded with chemically treated food, have since cut into the livelihood of those poor venders. . . . . In the west too the traditional local food is getting threatened by the growing popularity of the likes of KFC and Mcdonalds.

PLASTIC POISONING

"Plastic Poisoning"

We are in an age of synthetics  now. Clothes are  made of chemicals. Bottles, crockery and cutlery  are  made of chemicals which are progressively replacing glass and steel. Food products are packed in plastics. what we eat has chemical flavours, chemical preservatives, chemical taste enhancers ! Furniture is being made of plastics. Most of the electrícal appliances have lot of plastic in them and so have vehicles.

Yes. Plastics are slowly poisoning the planet and its inhabitants.

Life was quite different not very far back. Cotton was then not a rich man's fabrics as it is now. Food was all natural without a trace of pesticides or fertilisers.  Milk and sweets were adulterated with edible cheaper sustitutes and not urea and detergents. The word "organic" was coined later when the poison of chemicals got into food stuff. Packing material was cardboard or wood.

It was a differnt society then. We don't anymore see a traditional Dhobi (washerman) with his donkey. He used to visit houses, his donkey carrying both washed and dirty cotton  clothes.  Most of the clothes in a household  were then washed, starched and ironed by the dhobi. Detergents for home washing  came later.  That was the time when Lalitaji ads took the advertising world by storm flooding the media with motivational message for home washing of clothes. The detergent revolution made dhobi obsolete. Donkeys disappeared and detergent appeared. All the detergent ultimately getting washed down into rivers, polluting them wuth chemicals

All sorts of dreaded diseases are gaining epidemic proportion. We have to stop the use of plastics to save us from disaster. France has already banned plastics totally - from carry bags to crockery and furniture. Other countries are also in the process of banning the use of plastics. It appears to be an almost impossible task in India where people have come to totally depend on plastics.. A Wake Up call is necessary to build public opinion, to galvanise the government.

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