Holy Smokes!

Holy Smokes!


Ganga Prasad G. Rao
http://myprofile.cos.com/gangar


We Chennaites, conservatives and 'traditionalists' to the bone, may have adapted to rap tamil songs to accompany the annual Carnatic music festival, but when it comes to January, reading The Hindu while the cup of decoction coffee is still piping hot is still the 'in thing'. And January brings with it, besides the shrill religious music that interrupts many a tender moments, another traditional festival, Bhogi, the precursor to Pongal, the harvest festival. My ardent love for religion and Hinduism is quite well known. For the same reason, I generally stay clear of religious matters. But this one deserves attention. Over the years, the growing wealth among Indian families has been ostentatiously displayed in many ways including, unfortunately, overt displays of fireworks and the like. Come festival time - and the trend is to celebrate any and all festivals, election victories, five day match victory, ODI victory, Ganguly sixers and Kumble lbws - we are inundated by a mad cacophony of sound and light that serves no purpose than boost the ego of those lighting it. Why I even suspect an informal 'mafia ring' that goes around the localities handing out its 'evaluation' of whether households have spent enough on festival purchases. The more sound and light, and the more firecracker waste strewn around on the streets, the higher you are on their informal ladder of respect (and safety?) !

And whatever festival garbage remains on the streets despite the best efforts of the Corporation (Hey, we are entitled to our lighter moments!), is fuel for the traditional Bhogi fire. Diwali waste, garden waste, sweet boxes, styrofoam packings, plastic wrappings, you name it, the Bhogi fire consumes all. The 'holy smoke' from garbage burning mingles with the fog on the windless Bhogi morning made ever more dreary by the occluded sun to create something uniquely south-indian, the infamous 'Bhogi smog'. How divinely dangerous (and not just to the planes flying with reduced visibility)! Just when you thought your soot and cold-start benzene-exposed lungs could not be damaged more, what have you but the most toxic mix of pollutants in the air to herald the new year. (I guess, it's an early hurdle test. If one is to die from lung disease later in the year, he might as well die before the good times of harvest!).

Time was when nobody noticed but the asthmatics, the environmentalists, and of course, the garbage collectors. Today, environmentalists, meteorologists and pollution experts are ready with satellite readings and GIS software to monitor the direction of the dioxin plume. (I believe there is a way, at least informally, to exploit these trans-boundary transgressions monetarily. I fervently hope that it turns formal and hurts palpably) One also hopes, with so many TV channels, FM and AM stations around blaring public service messages, and the free TVs that were distributed with great fanfare, that the message pervades to all parts of the society, especially down to those elements who light fires with gay abandon. But then, what are the chances they 'd listen? So what does that leave us with? Another, 'I-told-you-so' fiasco? If you ask me, I'd have the mayor fund an annual campaign that doubles or triples the price of (unrecyclable) plastic (and other toxic) waste at recycle marts between Diwali and Bhogi. That would entice the waste-mongers to scrounge for plastic on streets and turn them in for their meal. And we might save a life or two, a few cancers and innumerable visits to the emergency room by asthmatics. You don't suppose the health and life insurance firms want to pitch in???

Shall we burn our waste early
and claim to avoid the Bhogi smog?
Shall we source segregate it
so urchins may light 'plastic only' fires?
Shall we hoard plastic for Bhogi day
knowing it'd fetch a price so high?
Shall we instead walk away
turning the proverbial blind eye?