A couple of years ago, I was in Wayanad on a short morning hike. Pristine mountains. The kind of air that makes you feel briefly virtuous just for breathing it.
A friend was walking alongside. We were talking, as you do on such walks, about everything and nothing. I was doing what I always do in places like that: looking up. Birds, sky, the light doing interesting things through the canopy.
She was doing all of that too. Commenting on the birds, noting the trees, entirely present in the conversation. And also, without breaking stride or sentence, bending down every few minutes to pick up a stray pet bottle, a biscuit wrapper, an old phone cover abandoned on the trail like a small act of surrender. Each piece went into her bag. At the end of the walk, it all went into a bin.
No announcement. No pause for effect. Just a person who had decided, at some point, that this was simply what you did when you walked in a beautiful place.
I was, briefly, awestruck. Then mildly ashamed. Then back to looking at the birds.
Last week, a different friend told me about something she does at home. Every few months, she boxes up the plastic that has accumulated, wrappers, packaging, the soft plastic that no municipality will touch, and couriers it to EcoKaari, a Pune-based company that handweaves it into bags and wallets and things you would actually want to own.
Four times a year. A box, some tape, a courier booking.
I told a few people. The response, reliably: that’s a lot of effort.
Which is an interesting sentence. Because the effort is perhaps forty minutes. The time exists. We spend more of it each evening scrolling through things we will not remember by morning.
The issue was never time. It was importance. Microplastics are now found in human blood, in placentas, in Antarctic snow. The facts are not hidden. They are just, somehow, not quite inconvenient enough to act on.
There is a lot of talk in India about sustainable living. Reusable bags, organic produce, the correct way to feel about single-use plastic at a wedding. What there is less talk about are people like these two, who are not talking at all. They are just doing the thing, quietly, in the middle of doing everything else. No audience required.
Neither announced anything. Neither posted about it.
EcoKaari has upcycled over five million pieces of waste plastic. Every single one arrived because someone decided it was worth the bother.
Sustainable living in India, at its best, looks exactly like this. Unhurried. Unannounced. And entirely without applause.
By the way, this is not a sponsored or paid post. No one asked for it. These are personal observations about people I admire, written on a Saturday morning, thinking about better living.
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There is a longer argument about why we do not make time for things that matter. It starts here: Are You Happy Yet?
