Opinion | Columnists
Old-fashioned conservation
It could have been the faint memory of the Great Crash of October 1929 or just the hard times they'd had in large families where there was never quite enough to go around, but our parents were compulsive conservers.
- Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:08 October 25, 2008
It could have been the faint memory of the Great Crash of October 1929 or just the hard times they'd had in large families where there was never quite enough to go around, but our parents were compulsive conservers. It irked us that Mother wouldn't accept the bags of the grocer and would instead fill her own bags.
That she would wash out those same bags and reuse them the next time she went shopping. We'd distance ourselves from her in the market, but at home we had to hang out those packets, fold them, store them - unnecessary chores, we felt. The same went for paper bags and gift wraps - it didn't matter that one sheet of gay wrapping paper sometimes went back and forth between friends until some young one tore it off! Plastic containers and cardboard sweet boxes, too, were never thrown away but reused until beyond use.
Father was more careless. But he was fixated on other stuff. Fruit skins and vegetable peels, bones and unchewable remnants were divided into categories and either hit the compost heap in the garden, or went to feed the hens and ducks in the small urban backyard.
So when the meal was over, we resentfully chopped messy papaya or banana peels into bite-sized morsels. It wasn't just that the poultry had to be fed - we had to check for eggs, remember to keep their water dish filled, sometimes lend a hand with the cleaning of the enclosure so that the droppings could be used as manure!
Washing up and bathing was another sore point - the 'clean water' drains led out into the flower and vegetable beds and during the rainy season we had to go easy on the amount of water we used to make sure we didn't get the garden waterlogged!
There was no fridge, no television, we didn't even have a music system. It was the piano, brought to life by Mother, that kept the popular songs of the sixties and seventies ringing in our ears! And petrol prices were not something we ever worried about - we walked or cycled most places or took the bus! Our own motorcycles and scooters financed by parental funds were an impossible dream.
Mother had her monthly budget and as prices went up, she juggled expenses around, using one onion or tomato instead of two or making other such adjustments that we couldn't even guess since the food remained as tasty as ever.
Taking a loan was something adults talked about in hushed tones, as if a great wrong was being contemplated. To build a house at the end of his career, Father just dipped into his retirement benefits than be a victim of that frightening word, 'debt'! When we grew up and became financially aware, we thought it ridiculous, but it was just the way they were. They wouldn't buy anything unless they could pay upfront - no credit cards, no instalments, no buy-now-pay-later!
In a time before 'Use and throw', when ink pens were phased out, they stuck to one 'ball-point' pen (gyro), which was refilled from time to time. Even now, there is a box full of 'empties' just waiting to be refilled.
No amount of explaining that when we ask for refills the shopkeeper looks at us as if we've landed from another planet will convince them to throw out both the empties and the box, so we let it lie there on the desk, a symbol of a time when our parents spent less than what they had and saved all they could for that rainy day around the corner.
A day that they are prepared for but we are not.
The writer is a journalist based in India.
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