Recycling/Green intiatives - Interesting perspective

Yaak..or why are they so penurious? - These are my thoughts as a child, whenever i notice a used-paint tin as bucket/mug in bathrooms. Similar were my perceptions about few other things which i saw at relatives/grand parents place. Recently during my discussion with a colleague i stumbled upon this thought - Is it that the practice of making some useful stuff out of the used ones at earlier times, a way of blessing in disguise. May be, the strong motives based on which those practices originated are financial reasons. But they inherently checked the over usage of stuff and implicitly placed re-use as a key philosophy of the house-hold.

The so called recycle, re-use practices which we are trying to inculcate now-a-days can be considered primitive/inferior compared to the practices, which were woven in to life-styles of our earlier generations. I can quote this by mentioning the bare minimum recycling/green practices followed during our parents/grand parents time:

1. Most of the gunny bags/polymer bags were transformed into usable bags with some sort of handles to carry.

2. Visit to vegetable markets is accompanied by bags as a thumb rule.

3. Used clothes are converted into door mats, sleeping mats etc.

4. Used plastic ware are eventually turned into vessels, mugs for regular use.

5. Water was carried in jars during journeys.

6. Disposable/bio-degradable banana leaves leaves were used for serving food during large gatherings.

Is it not wonderful, how efficient the above practices are! Apart from our regular gab about change , much needed in our current life-styles, is reminiscing and embracing some simple practices of living. I accept that we cannot return to those times. But what we can aim at is to make our life' simple in practice and extend the scope of re-use/green practices, relevant & critical to out existence further.

"The only hope to our clogged-up lifestyles is knowledge about practical simple living."

Developing to Doom.... Aren't We ???

Summary:
As we evolve, may we become knowledgeable only in the ways that show us path to happiness, but not of the ways that enlighten us to new frontiers of sorrow and grief !! :)



Its just the perfect way to start your day...Early in the morning I wake up to the dawn, open the door and inhale fresh breeze. Uhh... it just turned out to be a dream again! Fresh breeze is something which is too much to ask for in urban areas :). It might sound pessimistic, but never should our optimism prevent us from waking up to the fact before its too late.

Of course we can't say to ourselves, we will do everything perfect or do nothing. We have to evolve with what we do and in a way that not only pampers us presently but even if it slows us down a bit today will keep our progress steady further. The way urban areas are coping with the sporadic development today is one such example asking us to step out from our relaxing let go attitude and take some initiatives that bring out better model of development.

I do encounter thoughts like why do roads flood with rain water, after all people/government are supposed to address the problem, its not anything new!! Might be its just more tough to solve it ahead, if we neglect it now. One more mundane question is, say giant niche companies and government, are involved in driving the so called IT parks etc. Tell me when you are bringing about dozen establishments close to a capacity of 200-300 each, don't you know what sort of infrastructure you require in terms of roads especially. Might be its not reasonable to expect everything in place just the very moment you move into a new house, agreed, but you plan your actions to sort things out. I am basing my views w.r.t the IT zones I have seen both in Whitefield, bangalore and Hitech city, Hyderabad. There's no wonder why people talk of the way IT ruins places, say that its a honey coated knife. Surely the way it is handled makes people think so. Daily commutation to my workplace makes me ponder on these stuff. Let me talk about Bangalore. Can't they plan marathalli bridge atleast with in a reasonable time after whitefield campuses are operational. Don't say that government wants to be just optimal by adapting Just In Time (JIT) strategy :)). Due to government's diligence people had to cope with the traffic issue atleast for about 1.5 years, which was avoidable by all means at least to an extent. May be a similar comment, of course a bit subtle in terms of intensity can be made w.r.t Hyderabad.

Let me take a guess now, what could be the core reason for all these issues.

I strongly feel the reason is the lack of vision in terms of where we are heading encouraging....NO....emphasizing.....NO.....publicizing......only IT, ITES concerns as options. In fact we proved ourselves to the world what we are capable of and now we have the luxury to trade short term fancies in view of long term benefits. So, apart from making most of now, we need to steer the initiatives with commitment and stand out as viable option even further. I am not in the opinion of people should have done this....that etc., they could have just averted the basic issues perceived by people now, if only they had used some common sense. I clearly want to assert the statement, Government can act business personnel at some moments, but government shouldn't become business personnel. After all it needs to protect and serve to the interests of people rather empowering few and leaving rest to the empowered and god. So for the people who hold the steering, my call is:

“First things First and use commonsense when you need to act on something”


This is one side of the coin. The other side lies with in us, the majority of IT workforce. Did you ever observe how impatient we have become. People like me, crap about lot of things :). But again sometimes we need the best of virtues, patience to get around the problems we encounter daily. Of course by the word patience i don't mean that you just sit, relax and expect things to be better every day morning. It makes sense to strive for a change patiently, as things don't turn up overnight and restlessness shouldn't demotivate us. There are lot of changes in the world around us since we took birth here. Population has increased. Density of urban areas enormously grew. We can't expect roads to be empty, signals to swap just in a moment, no queues in front of ticket counters, no crowd at shopping places. We need to adapt and also learn, not to repeat our mistakes. We need to wake up to the fact that majority of the drift is destined to urban places. So, apart from the need to make the existing urban areas better for everyone's living, other places have to be made as viable options for living too. So my call for us is:

If you feel you are capable then get your hand on to the steering ASAP :) else Only when we can hold reasonable expectations, keep ourselves in peace and work towards sorting things, life would be promising.


Caution: If we just crap about things and do nothing!! blogs like these doesn't become obsolete any time soon.;) and surely we will develop to doom !! :(


Lastly i remember my childhood days when I used to think that world is just right, the way it is, giving me more reasons to be happy everyday :). Only when i grew up to see the way places and people changed, my childhood memories served as inspiration to better the things. Let us give a similar graceful childhood to the generations ahead. After all... they need much more inspiration to cope more tougher unseen problems ahead. All the best guys!!!

Exceptions thinking Vs Exceptional thinking

Did you ever felt this way -> may be thats the usual case but yet it might work for me ; Exception

I can quote lots of cases where i felt so, ranging from waiting in bus stand to sitting next to the good looking girl in the train...guess you too can add few to my list :). So lets call this "exceptions thinking". Hey bear with me for a little jargon with my naming conventions. ;)

When i was travelling alone sometime last week, i was just counting the instances of exceptions thinking in our daily routine. I started with the usual finger counts and soon realized that its a wrong idea. Anyways i thought its too high to count, but immediately felt may be its not usual case, i am just an exception...Oh again exceptions bite me hard. As usual, jubilant with that attempt itself started pondering what can be the reasons for the same. May be the too high count can be attributed to the long wish list we do maintain. Ofcos even i could think of one more reason as our attitudes ( +ve or -ve ). Whatever it is i felt it helps a bit but hurts us more,since it promotes the seductive wishful attitude, wherein we just hope something good/bad to happen rather than making an attempt to make our own destiny# Eureka ! this answers "Mey aisa kyom hu..?"


So what should i do now!! grilling this exceptions can only be done by simple plain thoughts put to proper execution and if its destined to be an exception let that happen...! And you guessed it right thats what i say exceptional thinking....isn't it ?