We are not responsible for Climate Change

The apocalyptic climate change affecting everyone across the globe is because of today’s throwaway culture, say leaders, but my wife is definitely not to blame.

At the recent World Economic Forum (WEF) virtual meeting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said it is consumerism and the fact that people are tossing away stuff needlessly, rather than use it for years, which is creating pollution and the horrible weather.

The leaders discussed the “State of the World” and said the issue needs an urgent remedy.

But fortunately, there are people such as my wife, and my friends and relatives, who are doing their bit to save humanity and never toss away anything, even if it is broken and has lost its usefulness.

In the flat we are living, there are three bathrooms, one ‘en suite’ (a French word I learnt after looking at hundreds of homes and finally realising we cannot afford a house of our own) and two ‘powder rooms’, in the parlance of the real estate agents in Canada.

(A Powder Room is presumably for women in North America to quickly powder their shiny noses, and consists of a toilet and a rack or storage for fluffy, fresh towels).

Much before the pandemic and before people stopped visiting each other, my wife would stake a claim on the guest bathroom in our leased apartment, in whichever part of the world we were in.

When you open the door to the guest bathroom, you will see suitcases stacked up to the ceiling and stuffed with things that only an astronaut stuck on Mars would find useful and also feel nostalgic of a world gone by.

When her mother left behind hundreds of vinyl records, my wife bought a new record player and tried to get someone to clean the records. The new record cases she bought from Amazon, are also stacked in the bathroom.

She then tried getting someone to transfer the film from an old hand-held movie camera, to the digital format, and one techie, who was out of a job, came to look at the films and the records, took the camera and disappeared for months.

I too keep my toolkit in the bathroom and whenever I need something, I walk in carefully, sideways, not to touch anything as things could come tumbling down on my head.

The bathroom is also stacked with empty cardboard boxes. We have yards and yards of popping plastic wrappers like the one you wrap the horrible looking ethnic lamp that you had bought when travelling to an exotic place.

That is because who knows when we have to move to another country and because the movers charge for every little box.

It’s not just my wife. When once I visited some people we knew, I realised their sofa was still wrapped in plastic. Sitting on it and chatting was quite a feat as I kept slipping off.

They still had their remote control wrapped in dusty plastic and a sad-looking empty fish tank. Fortunately, the wife was not wrapped up in plastic, though she looked fragile and a bit dusty.

My former colleague in Dubai collected all the newspapers that had his articles, hoping one day to clip and arrange them in a scrap book.

In Dubai, there is no concept of a ‘raddi-wallah’ (scrap dealer, who comes to your door collecting old newspapers and rubbish and even pays you cash for it), so his wife fed up with the garbage in the bedroom, put it out in the balcony and the years of my colleague’s hard work was reduced to a pulp, when it rained heavily one day.

In India, people keep driving their cars till one day it gives up its soul on the highway. So, the Road Transport Authority decided that no one should drive a car more than 15 years old and should be scrapped and that created distress among the motorists.

All I can say is that there are many among us who cannot be blamed for the climate change.

Mahmood Saberi is a storyteller and blogger based in Bengaluru, India. Twitter: @mahmood_saberi