Gitanjali Aiyar: An Icon of Bygone Era

 

In this era of screaming TV anchors and high-decibel debates that resemble a bout in a wrestling ring, the passing away of Gitanjali Aiyar reminded us of far more dignified, though somewhat staid, times of television news in India. Those were the early days of television news in the country and unlike a newspaper reporter or a radio newsreader, a TV newsreader has a face, and viewers were getting used to this novelty of seeing them regularly in their living rooms.

Gitanjali Aiyar, along with Neethi Raveendran, Minu, Komal G.B. Singh, Rini Simon, Preet K.S. Bedi, Suneet Tandon, Tejeshwar Singh and others became household names in the 1980s, when Rajiv Gandhi government went on an overdrive to spread the footprint of the country's lone television network Doordarshan across the country. TV towers were getting inaugurated on a daily basis in every other district, and it was seen as part of Rajiv Gandhi’s vision to take India to the 21st century.

For the viewers, this sudden burst of visual treat was very alluring. So far he/she had to go to the nearest cinema hall for visual entertainment. Moreover, the TV offered much more: global sporting events like Olympics, Asian Games and live telecasts of cricket matches, all of which could be enjoyed from the comfort of your homes. It was also a great boon for the invalid and the aged who could not go to cinema halls.

Though the government succeeded in making the television hardware ubiquitous across the country, the programming part remained very Delhi-centric, and heavily skewed in favour of the Hindi language. Since the state-owned Doordarshan enjoyed a monopoly over the airwaves, viewers were actually a captive audience with no other alternative. Satellite television and dish antennas were yet to make an entry.

Amid all these limited offerings, there was a 20-minute English news bulletin at 9 pm, which many of those residing in the non-Hindi belt looked forward to. Those were pre-teleprompter days and news readers had the unenviable task of reading through the paper and maintaining occasional eye contact with the viewers.

With her crystal clear accent, lean build, and immaculate sartorial sense, Gitanjali Aiyar soon endeared her viewers. Women used to gawk at the saree she used to wear and compare them with that of fellow women newsreaders.

However, many people did not know that Gitanjali Aiyar was actually a Maharashtrian and her maiden name was Gitanjali Ambegaonkar. Hence, she sometimes used to trip while pronouncing some tongue-twister names of South Indian cities and their people. This used to roil those residing in the south of Vindhyas – how could an Aiyar pronounce Kozhikode or Thenmozhi wrongly? Some even used to shoot off angry letters to the editor in English dailies.

Being a government-run institution, Doordarshan news was a bland fare as it had to go by the sarkari rule book. What passed off as a news bulletin was actually a caravan of speeches, book releases, and planting of trees (all mainly in Delhi) by telegenic Rajiv Gandhi. Things like 'breaking news' or 'flash' were unheard of and there was a yawning gap between what we saw on television and what we read in newspapers and magazines. The latter appeared to be closer to capturing the rough and tumble of Indian politics.

Towards the latter part of Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure, the country was rocked by Bofors, Shah Banu case, Ram Janambhoomi, and other controversies, but Doordarshan managed to remain hermetically sealed from all the heat and dust it generated.

The entry of satellite television in the late 1980s began stirring things up. It provided a glimpse of what BBC or CNN television news looked like. The launch of homegrown news channels like Star TV News and vernacular offerings in the mid-nineties raised the bar. Soon Doordarshan news had fewer takers and it got relegated to an also-ran status amid a gaggle of newly-started TV channels.

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Hammer Over Heritage

 

I recently came across this picture on Twitter of Mumbai’s Eros movie theatre covered with tarpaulins as it gets ready to be torn down to make way for yet another ritzy shopping mall. Built in 1938, Eros is one of the prime example of art deco style of architecture in the city, which was very popular in the 1920s and 30s across the world.

Art Deco combined modern styles with fine craftsmanship and rich materials, while symmetry was its hallmark. However, its dominance ended with the beginning of World War II and the rise of the strictly functional styles of modern architecture.

South Mumbai became a Mecca of art deco in the 1930s with apartments on the newly reclaimed Marine Drive built in this fashion. The trend later spread to suburbs such as Matunga and Chembur. In fact, even today Mumbai houses the second highest number of art deco buildings in the world after Miami.

Coming back to Eros, during my stay in Bombay (as it was known back then in the early 1990s), it was a landmark theatre located right opposite to the Churchgate station. It was dull yellow structure with a light maroon façade and had two art deco blocks joining in the middle to cylindrical structure.

Eros along with Regal and Sterling used to screen only English movies, and I remember that Steve Martin starrer Father of the Bride was the first movie I saw at Eros, and the first in Mumbai. The movie was a hit and the producers tried to milk it further with sequels.

After that these three movie theatres – Eros, Regal and Sterling became permanent fixtures during off days and holidays.

Those were pre-internet days and movie watching was an altogether different experience. Online booking was not even thought of, and hence, one had to reach the theatre a couple of hours in advance to avoid facing a ‘house full’ board at the ticket counter. Making an advance booking meant going to the theatre in the morning to book for a night show. 

After the culture of people going to malls and watching movies in multiplexes became well entrenched, the single-screen legacy theatres came under threat. Sterling reinvented itself into a multiplex, Regal diluted its Hollywood only norm and Eros stopped screening movies in 2016.

Now this piece of priceless heritage is soon going to be history.

Dumb and Dumber

 

While reading late journalist/editor Vinod Mehta’s memoir Editor Unplugged, published in 2014 and a sequel to his earlier memoir Lucknow Boy,  one is astonished to see the cockiness of TV news channels in the pre-Modi days. Mehta, whose entire four-decade-old career spanned through the print medium starting from the ancient linotype era, had a love-hate relationship with the TV news channels. 

He used to be a reluctant guest at some of the panel discussions on TV, but savoured the ‘face recognition’ it offered among the general public. He, however, claims that he will never trade his position as a print publication editor for that of a TV anchor.

Mehta chides Indian TV news anchors for lacking nuance while dealing with the complexities of politics, unlike their British and American counterparts, but grudgingly acknowledges that TV new channels have changed the citizen-politician relationship and made the latter more accessible to the aam aadmi. He also lauds TV channels for throwing light on the day-to-day hassles and cruelty experienced by the unempowered class.

A case in point was the brutal gangrape of a Delhi woman in 2012, now known as the Nirbhaya case. The saturation coverage by TV news channels ensured that the issue never got relegated to a statistic and the perpetrators got punished. The victim’s family hailed from a lower middle-class background. Various TV news channels, especially the vernacular ones, have also highlighted the woes faced by the urban poor in metro cities and the pathetic conditions of slums.

TV news reporters back then were very aggressive and never hesitated from shoving the mic in front of those in power and posing tough questions. During the 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai and the numerous corruption allegations that the then UPA government faced, the TV journalists raised pertinent questions that had put the Manmohan Singh government on the mat and it had to pay a heavy price during the 2014 general elections.

But after the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government came to power in 2014, the mindset of TV news reporters and media houses has undergone a sea change. There has been a total meltdown of the combativeness among the TV anchors with most of them toeing the government line. 

They can be now broadly classified into two categories – lap dogs and guard dogs. The former see no wrong in the government and sing praises day in and day out, and totally blank out any criticism or dissent. They willingly and unabashedly work as the propaganda arm of the government.

The second types also carry out the above functions, but in addition, they strain every nerve to discredit and nip in the bud whatever little dissent is left in the country. Former NDTV India anchor Ravish Kumar, one of those honourable exceptions who chose not to join the lap-dog-guard-dog herd, had coined the term Godi Media (media sitting in the lap of establishment) and it soon gained wide credence.

The conduct of mainstream leading television stations during the recent farmers’ agitation and earlier unrests will surely make Mehta turn in his grave. They were busy looking for a sliver of opportunity to discredit the protestors, look for a foreign conspiracy angle, and dub the protesters as anti-national. They never dared shove the mic in front of any ruling party neta to ask some hard questions.

This slavish docility is not confined to TV news channels. Many newspaper columnists have become circumspect and resort to wishy-washy stands on various issues. The same guys had no fear of taking on the Prime Minister and the government during Manmohan Singh’s tenure and before. 

Self-censorship is now a byword for most publications and it is there at all levels - right from the reporter to editor to proprietor. Hence spinning the narrative in the favour of the ruling party is the new credo. Otherwise, government ads stop coming or, even worse, they enter the bad books of state-run investigative agencies. 

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Plane Tales From India

 

As air travellers, Indians’ reputation has been zilch class and their eccentricities have provided enough fodder for stand-up comedians. The most notable ones include stuffing up the overhead cabin baggage holder with their unwieldy bags and air hostesses struggling to shut the holders before a takeoff, and the mad scramble to the door as soon as the aircraft comes to halt after landing. 

But of late they have, quite literally, touched a new low with the leaky bladders of male passengers on international flights, where free liquor is served. India’s flagship carrier Air India, which was recently taken over by the Tata Group, has been rocked by two ‘peegate’ scandals on their international flights. 

Interestingly both flights were bound for New Delhi. The first incident happened on board a New York-Delhi flight on November 26 and the second one happened on a Paris-Delhi flight on December 6. The media got the stinky whiff of the first incident only a little before the second one came to light. 

In the first incident, a 34-year-old Shankar Mishra, working with an American bank Wells Fargo, and travelling business class had got drunk and urinated on a 70-plus woman co-passenger.

While the passenger’s conduct was unpardonable, the airline crew’s reaction too fell woefully short. The air hostesses cleaned the victim’s seat and offered her pyjamas to change over, but the crew decided against offering her a fresh seat.

She was told to make do with the same damp and smelly seat with some extra blankets thrown in. When she refused, they permitted her to sit in the “jump” seat normally occupied by flight attendants during take-offs and landings.

Mishra realised his mistake and offered an apology, and the crew readily considered the matter closed. Upon landing, he was not handed over to security and was allowed to walk off after being served a 30-day flight ban.

In the second incident on the Paris-Delhi flight, a man urinated on the blanket of a female passenger while she was away from her seat. In this case, the crew’s conduct was a shade better. They identified and isolated the offender and reported the incident to authorities. The erring passenger was taken into custody by CISF personnel at the Delhi airport.

However, a police complaint was not filed, as both the accused and the victim had reached an understanding. CISF allowed the accused to leave after he tendered a written apology in deference to the victim’s wishes, the airline later said.

After the stink started spreading in the media, Wells Fargo promptly dismissed Mishra. Now the heat was on the Tata Group and its chief N Chandrasekaran issued a statement that the airline crew ‘fell short’ of its duties and derostered the pilot and the crew of that particular flight.

The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) too had ticked off Air India and reminded the airline that it should have reported the incident within 12 hours, and referred the matter to an internal committee to decide on a flight ban.

Meanwhile, Shankar Mishra went incommunicado and Delhi Police appeared clueless and many began wondering whether it is going to be a Komal Sharma redux. For the uninitiated, Komal Sharma has been elusive ever since carrying out an attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University students in October 2020. 

However, in this case, the Delhi Police nabbed Mishra from Bengaluru on January 6 from a guest house. Interestingly, his name was not even registered in the guest house logbook.

Amid all this din, everybody seems to have forgotten about the second culprit who had peed during the Paris-Delhi flight. His name and whereabouts continue to remain a mystery.

Mishra’s bail plea was rejected and he was in 14 days of judicial custody. After that, the trial began at a Delhi court, and Mishra is now singing a different tune. He now claims the woman had urinated upon herself due to her medical condition and pleaded not guilty! This was in contradiction to what he earlier said during the bail plea hearing. 

Air India’s lackadaisical handling of the incident is expected to make it all the more difficult to bring Mishra to book. 

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Joshimath Sinking

 

The term ‘land subsidence’ was hitherto known mainly to geology students and geologists, but thanks to the environmental disaster at Joshimath in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand state, it now has a wider currency. 

While the country had barely ushered in the New Year, panic gripped the residents of Joshimath after cracks began to appear in many roads, houses, commercial establishments and temples. Some structures are even tilting, thereby endangering the nearby buildings. All this means that Joshimath, which has a population of around 20,000, is slowly sinking due to land subsidence.

The Uttarakhand authorities have recently declared Joshimath as a landslide and subsidence-hit zone. Many families are now being moved to safer areas after their houses developed cracks and became unsafe. 

The US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has defined subsidence as the “sinking of the ground because of underground material movement”. The reasons can be man-made such as mining or large-scale extraction of water or natural causes like earthquakes and soil erosion.

Joshimath is considered sacred for Hindus as it is the winter seat of Badrinath. Every winter the idol of Lord Vishnu from Badrinath temple is moved to the Joshimath Vasudeva temple after Badrinath becomes snowbound. The town is also a gateway to Hemkund Sahib, a pilgrim centre for the Sikhs. Joshimath also has a significant army presence and has been a transit spot for trekkers bound for the Himalayas. 

Located at a height of 1,875 metres above sea level on the Himalayan foothills, Joshimath is part of an ecologically sensitive zone. However, the increasing influx of tourists for pilgrimage and trekking trips to the Himalayas has led to the proliferation of hotels, and lodges, and an increase in road construction activity. 

Environmentalists have been raising alarm about the strain the region was facing due to increased construction and road-building activity, often with total disregard for the ecology of the region. But commercial gains through tourism and overall prosperity in the region have made the policymakers and the local residents overlook them.

This has been the case with most Indian tourists and pilgrim centres. The way Madhav Gadgil’s report on the Western Ghats has been ignored by various state governments in the peninsular region, irrespective of party affiliations, is a case in point.

However, Joshimath’s ecology is proving to be far more fragile and things have reached a tipping point. Experts point out that Joshimath town rests on a deposit of sand and stone, and not rock. Hence it doesn’t have a high load-bearing capacity to hold the foundations of the buildings. In fact, way back in 1976, the MC Mishra Committee had warned against heavy construction activity in Joshimath. 

But unmindful of these warnings, a number of hydel power plants have been sanctioned around the town. In 2021, the Tapovan-Vishnugad project on the Dhauliganga river witnessed flash floods caused by a glacial burst killing over 200 people. 

The town has also been witnessing heavy road construction activity and rail tunnelling as part of the Char Dham project, which will link Rishikesh with four pilgrim destinations - Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunothri and Gangothri.

In short, Joshimath has become an infrastructure-stressed zone and it is too early to pinpoint what exactly has triggered the current ecological crisis. There are also reports of cracks in houses in Karnaprayag, located nearly 82 kilometres away from Joshimath, and Srinagar Garhwal located 140 kilometres away. This shows that the current malaise is far more widespread than earlier thought and is unfolding.

Uttarakhand state was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000, as it was felt that Lucknow was mismanaging the resources of its northern hill districts. Interestingly, the movement for statehood was an offshoot of two earlier environment protection mass movements — Chipko Andolan and the Anti-Tehri Dam Agitation. However, after the formation of Uttarakhand the corporate-contractor lobby has gained an upper hand over environmentalists, and they have little regard for ecology.

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In Memoriam

It has been over a year since my mother passed away. It all began on August 8 last year, when she slipped on a wet floor and got badly hurt at our home in  Kozhikode. I got a call during my morning walk here in Bangalore.

I was dreading and praying it was not a fracture, but no such luck. She was hospitalized and doctors opined that surgery needs to be done as the fracture was a complex one.

This sudden turn of events forced me to rush to Kozhikode. Luckily train tickets were available and I reached the very next day after the fall.

When I reached the Kozhikode District Cooperative hospital she was in deep pain. Initially, she was admitted to the general ward as special ward rooms were not available. The scene there was chaotic with almost all patients with plasters and slings as the ward was meant for patients needing orthopaedic care.

I then went to the Orthopaedics outpatient rooms to meet Dr Reju, who was treating my mother. In terms of appearance, he had a height that would have been ideal for a basketball player. He was a soft-spoken and affable man, probably in his mid-thirties or early forties with a substantial girth.

He said that surgery was the only way out. When I raised my concerns about my mother’s age, she was 80, he said it was still doable and the hospital will ensure that her other health parameters are in check before the surgery. “Don’t worry we will fix this,” he said assuringly.

On his mobile phone, he showed the X-ray print. There were fractures at two points on her left femur bone, along with some minor cracks nearby. He readily offered to share the X-rays with me on WhatsApp and I sent them to a distant relative, who is also an ortho surgeon. He too concurred with what Dr Reju had suggested.

I later dialled up various sources to get a room and don’t know which one worked – she was shifted to a room on the second day. This shift calmed things down a bit, as I didn’t have to witness other patients in a far worse state writhing in agony over the pain caused by road accidents and other much more serious injuries.

For me the daily routine was somewhat like this: Sleep overnight in the hospital; get up to buy breakfast etc for mom and caretaker; leave for home for a bath, shave and breakfast; rush back to the hospital before 10 am to be present during the doctors’ morning rounds; buy medicines; leave for home during lunchtime and return by evening. Luckily my home was a 10-minute walk from the hospital, and I used to walk, except while going for lunch when I preferred an autorickshaw to escape the blazing afternoon sun.

Kerala back then was in the grip of the Covid-19 second wave and daily caseload and test positivity rates were at alarming levels. The fourth floor of the hospital was a designated Covid ward, while my mom was in the fifth.

Ambulances with blaring sirens rushing towards the hospital were a normal occurrence. A couple of times I happened to be near the hospital entrance when they arrived. A flurry of activity follows, healthcare personnel fully covered with white PPT kits and Ku Klux Klan-type hoods used to emerge out of the ambulance, and some from the hospital, also covered from head to toe with PPT kits, would rush to escort the Covid patient to the waiting stretcher or wheelchair.

Almost every onlooker used to dart away from the path and keep a safe distance when the stretcher carrying the patient moved to the lift.

There was an oxygen plant within the hospital premises and it was humming with activity. While getting into the lift I often used to come across hospital employees wheeling the longish oxygen cylinder and getting off at the fourth floor.

The Covid paranoia within the hospital was very strong. Everyone was wearing double masks and I sometimes had trouble trying to make out what those nurses were saying. While the hospital was maintaining safety protocols on most floors, it was lax on the ground floor lobby. It appeared crowded most of the time with people milling around the billing counters, canteen, X-ray room, pharmacies, and outside the consulting rooms of various doctors. 

I sometimes would willingly suffer the toil of taking the stairs to the fifth floor when the crowd waiting at the lift lobby appeared too much for comfort. While taking the stairs, the fear of the virus kept me at arm’s length from the railings!

Hand washes were almost as frequent as looking at phone screens. The clothes I wore at the hospital used to be dunked straight into the washing machine on reaching home. The last thing I wanted was to contract the dreaded virus and pose a risk to others.

On the surgery day, my mother was put into a stretcher around 8 am and wheeled off to the operation theatre. As a bystander, I had to wait outside. Keeping physical distancing in mind, I occupied a seat among the waiting chairs where the next one was vacant. But as the day wore on, the crowd outside the operation theatre swelled and it became impossible to find such seats.

Once the surgery got over the nurse called out my mother’s name. As I approached her, she told me the surgery was successful and told me to bring in her toothbrush and a pair of dresses as she will be spending the day at the post-operative care and may return to the ward the next evening.

After she came back to the ward, she appeared a bit calmer but complained of pain caused by surgical wounds. She was allowed to have semi-solid food by placing the bed on a recliner position.

She seemed to be on road to recovery and doctors during their morning rounds appeared satisfied with the progress. However, Dr Reju used to sometimes chide her for not being active enough, used to tell her to spend time in a recliner position and try to move the affected leg a bit.

A few days later the physio accompanying the doctor began holding her leg and moving it, and she used to shriek in pain. He told us to make her sit in bed and hang her leg a couple of times a day.

As the day of her discharge neared, we made arrangements for a wheelchair and suitable toilet seats for her future requirement. On reaching home, she continued with medicines and other treatments.

Doctors had advised us not to entertain many guests at home, as Covid was rampant in most places. So many of my relatives used to call up to know mom’s condition. In fact, some of them had already fallen prey to the dreaded pandemic and were recovering.

Mom’s condition appeared to be on the mend. She began taking normal food, though in small quantities. As the cot at home was much more low-slung than the hospital bed she found it easier to put her feet down.

It was over three weeks since I came to Kerala and I had some urgent matters to settle in Bangalore. So I had to leave and was planning to return after a few days.

However, fate had different plans. About two days ahead of my scheduled departure for Kerala, I got a call saying her condition had worsened and she has been rushed to hospital. She had a heart attack, the first one in her life.

After having lunch, mom complained of uneasiness, and the doctor couple in the ground floor flat was called. They rushed to attend to my mom and suggested that it requires immediate hospitalisation. The same couple was the first responder when my mother had a fall.  

I managed to get tickets for the 8 pm train, but by 5 pm I got to know that she was no more. After reaching home in Kerala around 8 am, I immediately got ready for the funeral. The crematorium officials had given us a slot before 9 am, as after that they only deal with Covid funerals, which required a much more stringent safety protocol.

After performing a brief ritual, the body was placed on a conveyor belt, which was wheeled into the incinerator chamber of the electric crematorium. As I came out I could see the smoke coming out of the chimney, and the grim realisation that all was over dawned upon me.

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Plastics conundrum

 

The new ban on ‘single use plastic’ is on. The government has defined ‘single-use’ plastic as something that is used once and then disposed of or recycled.

The government has listed 21 items that need to be phased out and they included plates made of plastic, cups made of plastic, earbuds with plastic sticks, glasses made of plastic; wrapping or packaging films around sweet boxes, cigarette packets among others.

While going through the extensive lists, it made me sit up and wonder as to how plastics have quietly seeped into our lives and become so well-entrenched that we can’t think of a life without them.

The durability and convenience the plastics offer have proved to be a Faustian bargain in the long run. Once we discard plastic items, they are not biodegradable and usually go to a landfill where it is buried or it gets into the water and finds its way into the ocean. They later break down into tiny particles and release toxic chemicals. These chemicals find their way into our food and water supply and are found in our bloodstream, causing various ailments including cancer, infertility, birth defects and impaired immunity.

I was lucky enough to have a glimpse of what a pre-plastic or a less-plastic era looked like. We had to carry a glass bottle or steel container while going to buy milk, a cloth bag was integral to shopping at grocery and vegetable stores, and every shop stocked discarded newspaper to wrap and pack the goods.

Some shopkeepers used the packets made out of newspapers, while others used the newspaper sheets to wrap the commodities which were tied up using a thread – of thick cotton or gunny bag material. The speed and adeptness with which those veteran shopkeepers used to wrap and tie ½ kg dal or sugar in a paper sheet and tie it up with a thread used to make me wonder how they pulled it off.

Back then, there were hardly any supermarkets and friendly neighbuorhood kirana stores were the mainstays, even in metro cities. They were basic sub-1,000 square feet stores with gunny bags of rice, wheat, sugar, and various pulses occupying most of the floor space, while bottles of health drinks such as Horlicks or Bournvita, soap, toothpaste, and other toiletries and detergents were laid out in shelves.

The storefront cupboard with a glass display was reserved for chocolates and biscuits, while toffees of various price range and various dry fruits were stored in largish cookie jars made of glass. This was how Kirana stores from Kashmir to Kanyakumari looked with minor variations.

At vegetable shops there were tokris (baskets made out of bamboo) to keep different vegetables. At meat and fish shops the mutton or chicken was wrapped in paper and we need to have a cloth bag to carry them home.

Hospitals, clinics, and medical stores doled out syrups and tonics in glass bottles. Cool drinks such as Fanta and Coke in their earlier avatar came in glass bottles, tea/coffee in hotels was many served in glass tumblers or steel glasses. In places such as Agra and some other neighbouring towns we had tea shops serving tea in kulhads or clay containers.

Plastic was confined to a few items such as toothbrushes, pens, face cream containers, lunch boxes and water bottles for schoolchildren, and educational stationery such as rulers, protractors, and set squares.

Later milk cooperatives adopted plastic bags, as they offered hassle-free milk delivery. Customers too readily accepted it as milk bottles or containers were no longer required.

The introduction of Polyethylene Terephthalate containers or PET bottles and the concept of bottled mineral water dealt a body blow to the glass bottle industry. Colas, cough syrups, liquor, shampoo … all that were hitherto packaged in glass bottles, began getting replaced by PET bottles, as they were unbreakable.

Soon some of these bottles found their way to trash cans. But in many households these bottles began to be reused for other utilitarian purposes such as storing edible oils.

Moreover, ragpickers, who act as links between the community and plastic recycling units, play a major role in bringing down plastic waste. These men and women live on the margins of society, and their working conditions are hazardous, rummaging through garbage mounds dotting most urban areas of the country.

However, it soon proved to be a losing battle for them, as plastic usage kept on increasing and even getting introduced in hitherto unused areas.

One of the early disruptors of this already worsening situation was plastic cups. They began making their presence at railway stations. The areas near the railway tracks began bearing the brunt as passengers began throwing discarded cups through the window. Soon all tea shops began dispensing tea in plastic cups as one need not wash cups and users also found it easy to carry and not bother about returning the glass.

Then came the plastic carry bags, which just turned the whole packaging industry on its head. The first to go was the paper bags and newspaper sheets as shopkeepers found plastic carry bags to be more convenient to use - no time-consuming wrapping was required.

Customers too were drawn to this novelty as it gave them freedom from using cloth bags and they could carry it easily, come rain or shine. They dealt a body blow to the discarded newspaper business, as shopkeepers traded paper bags with plastic ones.

Soon plastic carry bags acquired a pan-India presence and they were used to carry just about everything - from groceries to vegetables to fish and meat.

After the novelty value vanished, the devastating effects of these bags began to set in. They were found discarded in trash cans and on the wayside. As they were lightweight they got easily blown away by the wind like cotton seed flowers and soon became ubiquitous – and were found even in the bellies of stray cattle.

For garbage managers, they became a major headache and soon municipal landfills soon got overwhelmed by plastic bags. City municipalities tried various methods including waste segregation, a ban on the use of plastic bags, and a crackdown on stores violating these norms, but these bags of 40-50 micron thickness continue to elude any viable and long-lasting solution.

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