I believe in daily walking or doing exercise to keep up my health in such a condition so that (a) I can be of help to others and (b) I didn’t disturb others to help in my daily chores. Still I couldn’t walk daily due to a surgery in my leg and frequent nagging leg pain triggered by flat foot conditions of mine.
Though I am not a regular walker, whenever possible I go for a walk with a lot of healthy good vibes. I prefer avoiding treaded paths and picking up new routes; I believe and practice that seeing hitherto not seen pathways and buildings help forget the tiredness and pain of a long walk.
On the other day when I was on such a mission I noticed four ladies coming on the far end of that new road. Walking in groups is common for ladies, but each of these ladies were walking with prams. My thought process went haywire and I started appreciating those females who were so disciplined to not only go for a walk in the early morning but bring their babies too for getting fresh air and sightings. I recalled the statement of researchers, ‘(sun)light and (less polluted) fresh air are the best medicines’ for any ailments and, eager to see them and their babies closer, walked briskly. They too came faster towards me and suddenly they stopped walking and pushing their prams to one side of the road. While wondering why they stopped I came closer to them and got awestruck to see them in close quarters; Believe me they are not a group of morning walkers but a group of gypsy women and the prams were old and in dilapidated condition! No babies in those prams, but junk collected from dustbins.
I realised their sudden stopping was due to a couple of garbage bins; they started examining the garbage bins and picked up plastics, paper and metals and kept each of the picked items in the respective prams.
Though wrack picking is not a great job, what is appreciable was their intention of creating livelihood without depending on others and their presence of mind to use worn out prams as a mode of transportation! This way they help reduce reuse and recycle.
It is a fact that an average Indian – irrespective of his financial status, practices optimum use of resources – food, garments, home appliances, furniture, electricity, etc. As per hearsay an average middle class Indian buys around 10 sets of garments in a year unlike his Western counterpart whose such purchase may be easily 10X or more. Not only garments, take any parameters like per capita consumption of electricity, petrol, home appliances, meat or fruits, India’s data is abysmally low.
Attitude of most Indians is to conserve each and everything to the maximum possible extent. It is an age-old practice inculcated in Indian families who used to worship all natural resources with due respect. Whatever it is, habit of reducing, reusing and recycling runs in their blood; India is so incredible and the pro-planet way of Indians living style will help future citizens of our mother planet earth.
