Spicy Rasam

We used to own a teak wood dining table. It was strong. I remember us using it to clean ceiling fans, roofs, just dance around when mom was at work 😊. This dining table was with us for a good 25+ years. My dad had bought it before he got married and it was with us until I was 18 years. We had to sell it when we moved to a house that was small. I remember my mom fussing over how we need to buy a lot of furniture and discard the old ones, because there was just no space to keep the humongous furniture that they’d had for years. These fit well in government head quarters well, fit well in housing board houses, but not privately built ones.

I remember, in early 2000s, houses became smaller. The reason I remember this is because every housewarming we went to people talked about getting smaller furniture. “We got this dining table in Vasant and co.” Prerna aunty boasted. It was very small compared to the 8-seater they had owned. I remember thinking, if her kid climbed on this, it will break. It looked fragile. Since everyone was buying it, so did my mom. We got a redwood lookalike tiny table that came with fragile chairs. I was afraid to sit on the chairs for one whole year. What can I say? I considered myself strong. One of the chairs broke in one year (not because I sat on it!!). The other one started to wiggle and shake, making the person sitting on it hold on to the table just in case it breaks. Soon, people realised these were not of good quality. My mom still remembers our old, teak dining table fondly. And we’ve changed 4 dining tables after the rosewood lookalike, all petite, in 12 years.

I wondered if other people generated this much garbage too. I started to observe. They did. Some even more than us. I observed that people were renovating a lot now. The houses got smaller, remember? So, now they wanted big houses. So, they bought 2 houses, broke the walls, and merged these two houses. I used to cringe at the thought of breaking down walls because that will weaken the construction of the whole building (I am talking about apartment complexes). I sometimes voice this concern and the only people who agree with me are my maid, the plumber and building mason. Everyone else is just too pre-occupied to care. “So, you’ve broken the beams and taken space from the common vent. Is it ok? Won’t this hamper the overall strength of the building?” I asked my friend during a housewarming, recently. She stared blankly at me and said, “You know they are going to build a connecting road from here to the railway station. Work will start next month.” I gave a knowing smile and nodded, “Good for you!” I said and received a bright smile from her. She was in her space now. I’d deviated from the script and asked about “things that don’t matter”. So, I just went back to talking about what was in the script. How wonderful the house is, how beautiful the decorations are, how amazing the kitchen looked, etc. The huge pile of garbage she’d accumulated in her parking spot and cracks in the lobby roof were not housewarming topics.

So, the point is (see, I do have a point!), maybe we must try to generate less garbage. Maybe find ways to keep people in their towns and villages and lessen the population in cities, by introducing “work from home” and “co-working spaces.” Maybe lessen consumerism because this might be a good economy -building space, but it increases vanity and a false sense of self. Maybe create awareness to make people think about the hole journey of some object that they buy, usage, maintenance, endurance and life. The world is already drowning in garbage. A little mindfulness can help us keep the world livable for our kids.