Very Yucky Plasticky

A few weeks ago as I peeped into the bag of groceries my husband had just brought home, I saw exactly what you can see in the picture above. I was rather surprised as bread is the one thing that none of us eat regularly. I prefer giving the kids home cooked Indian breakfasts with chocolate cereal thrown in just once a week! I do not know how to bake bread nor do I want to learn to, since it isn't a staple part of Indian cuisine. Plus that list of ingredients on store bought bread scares me. Anti oxidants, emulsifiers, stabilizers, permitted colours and flavours and what not! I grew up eating white bread with eggs for breakfast in those days of yore when the concept of brown bread had not been introduced in India. The Indian Army doled out a fixed quota of bread every week for the officers and families and we dutifully munched our way through the rather hard, uncut loaves every morning. And since I'm still alive and kicking, this dislike for bread may just be a quirk of my mind. Also somewhere in my mind bread smacks of colonial domination of our taste buds and that is enough to put me off it, unless I have lots of left over cooked vegetables. Then, once in an odd while, my children do get grilled sandwiches as a snack! The only people who eat bread in our household are our house help and my husband's driver. And those loaves are delivered by our bread and milk man at an unearthly hour every morning. So what was this that he had bought?
I looked at the loaf closely. Then I burst out saying that this was exactly how factory made bread used to be wrapped up during my childhood! In wax paper, not the environment damaging plastic that is the norm these days. My husband beamed at me and said that is exactly what that loaf had reminded him of - the bread of his childhood - and that is why he had bought it. I was so thrilled to see something I haven't seen in India for more than twenty years that I actually ran my hand over the wrapped loaf and waxed eloquent about it!
We recalled the days when everything was wrapped using card board or paper, which, instead of being discarded into the bin, was then sold to the scrap paper vendor and was recycled, thus reducing garbage literally by the tons. Those nasty acidic, sugary soft drinks came only in glass bottles which were returned to the factory and sterilized (I hope!) and reused, unlike the plastic two litre monstrosities of today. As if the original two hundred millilitres weren't bad enough! We all carried giant bags to the grocers for groceries and to the green grocers for fresh vegetables. They did look horrendous and hideous - no big brand names there- but definitely helped the environment.
I remember my grandmother buying rice, wheat and lentils for the whole year and this used to be delivered in large gunny (jute)  bags which, once empty, were used for various purposes but never trashed.  One use that stands out in my mind was their strategic placement outside the front door for wiping muddy shoes during India's plentiful monsoon showers. Today, of course the environment is no longer conducive to no holds barred rainy days. We have managed to destroy the pattern of  the life giving  cycles of rain too! Now, my grains come in pre packaged, sealed plastic bags every month which promptly find their way into the kitchen bin, once empty.
Some efforts are now being made in India to stem the unchecked flow of plastic but it feels like too little, too late. All the big brands now charge a measly Rs. 5.00 if you do not have your own bag while shopping at the mall. Since this is the equivalent of roughly one twelfth of an American Dollar people just go ahead and buy them and cram shopping worth hundreds of dollars into them!And then those bags soon find their way onto already overflowing city trash heaps...because every one wants to keep their own house trash free. Who cares about Mother Earth?
For the last few years my mother and her friends have been making cloth bags at home with scraps of cloth and distributing them to fruit and vegetable sellers in and around various neighbourhoods in our home town, in order to prevent them from giving super thin, horrible-for-the-environment type of plastic bags to customers who come bag less to buy a week's worth or more of veggies! They are also segregating dry and wet trash very dutifully. But they remain a minority...
Corinne Hoffman, Swiss- German author of the book 'The White Masai' writes that when she first came to Kenya in the late eighties and travelled to the Samburu region, there wasn't a bit of plastic to be seen in the African bush. When she returned to Kenya at the start of the millennium, she says in her book 'Reunion At Barsaloi' that every single bush and tree in the interiors was adorned with colourful plastic bottles and plastic bags! The green could hardly be seen for the plastic. The plastic scrouge had finally hit this continent too..
Around the time I saw the bread in waxed paper, my daughter returned from her compulsory Cultural Field Study trip that the school organizes every year. As she unpacked her bag, she pulled out a curious looking packet. She said she had bought some red chilly powder at the local market to add to the rather bland food that is served in rural Kenya. What fascinated me was the very eco friendly way of packing the powder. Instead of a small plastic packet that is now the norm the world over, a piece of dry bark had been used along with some reusable twine. What an ingenious way to avoid plastic! Despite all my misgivings about plastic ruling the roost, maybe there is hope for our environment yet?

                                      She just tapped out the chilly powder as and when needed!

                                  How the 'daily bread ' is wrapped in India and Kenya. Waxed paper seems to be on the wane!