Adulting or Adulteration? The world of Subscription and Pollution

The world is too much with us

I recited this visionary Petrarchan Sonnet -"The World is too much with us" by Williams Wordsworth back in my school days. At that time, "The Daffodils", by the same poet, was the most popular poem in the school and had a record of winning a position in almost every poetry recitation competition, irrespective of who recited it. Of course, the teacher's pet. 

Little did I know that one day this not-so-popular poem by Williams Wordsworth would become the reality of Life. I did not know the meaning back then, but I remember this poem for years, even after fumbling after 5 lines during the recitation competition. Well, that truly emphasises learning without understanding. 

And that is what modern living has become today.

Adult life or Adulterated life

Talking about childhood- remember how, as kids, we all wanted to grow up and become adults?

In our bid to lead an adult life, we started living an adulterated life without even knowing. The flashy advertisements did not just shape our childhood but continue to influence our choices, again, leaving without earning earlier, and now living without learning. 

I do not blame marketing, but our innate greed that has polluted everything, including the land, water, air, in short, the environment. 

We claim to love nature, but in reality, we have abused our natural resources. We do not just take the abundance for granted, but we have traded carbon footprint for plastic footprint. Every tourist place in our country has empty packets of chips, biscuits, and other eatables marking- the Careless Indian was here!

The entitlement just increases from consumers to corporates, individuals to businesses, who think it is easier to dump chemicals in the air, water and land and get away with it, than working on a sustainable system.

The classic case- cutting the same branch on which we are sitting for survival. 

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Real to Real estate

Humans are a double-edged sword. We appreciate nature, and simultaneously, are obsessed towards destroying it. The Ken-Betwa project, Aravalli MTR, deforestation drive in Nashik Kumbh or Aarey Milk Colony, et cetera...the list of human development [Real Estate] vs environment sacrilege is never-ending. 

Hitherto, the real estate ads used to entice with- Multistoried apartments with concrete gardens, swimming pools and state-of-the-art facilities, with free AC installed in all rooms blah blah blah.

Very soon, the same estates would proudly advertise- Gardenview, Oxygen Park, Open sky and exclusive apartments disguised as bungalows. Probably, water filters in all bathrooms and centralised air purifiers. And for early bird bookings- get one year of free water softener salt. 

People move from individual houses to fancy societies, and their lifestyle shifts from amenities to high maintenance charges. 

Electricity is prepaid

Water is no longer free

And the heavy maintenance charges levied by societies still do not ensure clean water. 

Whoever said that all the best things in the world are for free has either not been hit by the so-called development bug or is actually living under a rock. Even our idioms bear references to natural resources.

Machines fixing what humans broke

Whoever says that we lack development must see the rising bank balances of politicians and progressive pollution levels. We have happily polluted nature and then invented machines, claiming to fix what we have destroyed. 

Cost is high, but the accountability is zero. It gives a semblance to the Indian budget where crores are allocated to certain funds, but nobody really knows what happened to those funds or the promised developments. 

Such is adult life, adulterated by pay first, question later. 

Air, Water and the Price of Survival

Bamboozled by economics and stressed by rising AQI levels, I was forced to stay indoors, armed with my expensive air purifier and impoverished plants. Akin to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, there is Global warming everywhere, but my balcony barely gets any sunlight. My Malis [gardener] advised me to water plants with the filtered RO water. What? Err! RO water, really? 

Irony is- my RO maintenance guy advised me to install additional Alkaline filters for retaining magnesium, calcium and minerals in the system. 

They said RO water strips off nutrients. But I wonder, it strips off water more than the nutrients, and how does a simple filter decide which is the pure water- the one that is discarded or the one that is sent to the tank? Or is it just a marketing gimmick to turn hard water into tasteless drinkable water?

Water hardness - the new urban villain

It is not just AQI that touches four digit even water hardness is alarmingly high.

Water hardness is a serious issue, and the solution is painfully expensive. Reverse osmosis RO, once a revolutionary kitchen solution, today it is nothing more than a marketing breakthrough and a wastage of water. 

The tapwater in my society had a hardness level of 1100. No wonder I am losing hair, I'm blaming it all on stress and lifestyle- after paying the bills and taxes, of course. 

Taxation and pollution may not just share the same rhyme scheme, but also have a similar sapping style. The government logic says simple- if you can purchase it, you must have money- even if that money has come from a salary already taxed at the source. 

Taxation is quite funny! You thought it was a boring economic subject? VAT and Vatavaran [tax and environment] is an interesting discussion. 

Anyways, to combat water hardness in my bathroom, I called the Yureka Forbes representative for an estimate, and he quoted Rs. 46,000 per bathroom! 

Yes, per bathroom, as each room has a different shaft and supply pipes in this high-rise. Well, this is just the cost of the machine and does not include half-yearly filter changes. I either deploy the solution in one or more bathrooms and washing areas, or replace my washing machine parts every 4 months due to hard water, lead, and scaling. 

So even machines cannot fix the broken nature for a sustainable period. Period!

Who thought that adult life would be so adulterated? 

The illusion of progress is such that someday, maybe, future generations will visit sanatoriums or museums displaying trees, freshwater rivers, purified breathing Chambers, all by paying a premium subscription price for what nature has once given us for free. Until then, we may continue downgrading our environment, upgrading our gadgets, celebrating our corruption, and proudly calling it development. Cheers! 

Numerounity