Double Standards on Wastage
A couple of days back, I heard that the government of Karnataka banned an event called “Le Tomatina”. What’s that, you ask? It’s a copy of a similar festival in Spain where people pelt (huge amounts of) tomatoes at each other for fun. You can also see it in song from the movie, Zindagi Na Milegi Doobara . The reason for the ban makes sense: How can it be right to waste food like this, especially in a country where so many starve or barely get enough to eat? For once, a politician did something right. So far so good. A couple of days later, though, I saw a bunch of people performing sheerabhishekam (pouring milk) on giant placards of a Kannada movie star because it was his birthday. I don’t get this: how can it be OK to waste food in one case but not the other? And while everyone likes to criticize lavish spending during weddings, pouring milk down the drain evokes no response. Wonder why? It’s almost as if wasting, per se, is neither good nor bad. Rather, the attitude seems to be to t...