In my five decades of life, I have seen my lifestyle oscillating between mass and class. What used to be common in my childhood became down-market, as new flashy things from the West became aspirational. But by the time my youth was making an exit, the same old things of my childhood were becoming elite and fashionable.
Let me take a few mundane examples. Our grocery shopping used to be in cloth bags or thailas. We carried them to the store and re-used them till they were no longer usable. Then came the era of fancy plastic bags with store names or product brands printed. They promised convenience and announced that you have brought that brand. Our kitchen doors had one plastic bag full of a bunch of such bags. The best ones went below the mattress to keep them well-creased.
The green-washing sustainability era told us not to use plastic bags. Governments spent millions on campaigns to reduce plastic use. Regulations restricted single-use plastic bags, and now, paper and cloth bags are back in our lives. We look down upon plastic bag users though we still miss their convenience. We are back to carrying a thaila to shop, partly because bags now come with a price tag.
Till the early 1990s, we used to drink tap-water across the country. While travelling, we drank at any railway station. Then came bottled water, initially at high-end hotels and restaurants. Drinking bottled—or, as it was mistakenly called, mineral—water was elitist. Visiting NRIs carried a plastic water bottle. Then they became mass products in every nook and corner of the country. In the remote areas with no piped water, plastic water bottles are ubiquitous.
They are also a big contributor to garbage and pollution, but that is a conversation for another day. Meanwhile, the elite first moved to premium brands that promised water bottled high up in the mountains; then they started carrying their own non-plastic bottles. Now we all are carrying our metal or glass bottles. Our stores are full of colourful ones you can flaunt. I am waiting for the day when I can again drink tap-water.
Vegetarian to non-vegetarian to vegan and back to vegetarian is another cycle that happened in my lifetime. Fashion has taken many rounds too. If you kept your wardrobe intact, you can easily recycle it, provided you stayed in shape.
These churns made me understand the cyclic nature of time that our scriptures keep talking about. Everything that comes must go away. The past will return as future while you enjoy the present. Well, the human mind loves to peep into the future. So let’s look into a wishful future through this cyclic lens.
Processed food is probably the biggest change that is yet to see a reversal—it is still on the upswing. One effect of this is cooking less at home and the mushrooming of food delivery platforms. People talk about organic, healthy food, but the number outlets fuelled by cloud kitchens defeat those wishes. The food economy is still telling us it’s uncool to cook in your kitchen. Unfortunately, young professionals are getting lured by discounts and convenience. Hope they reverse this before it’s too late.
I am hoping to see local cows and buffaloes supplying us milk, instead of milk travelling to us from large processing units, through long supply chains. The same hope is there for locally-grown vegetables.
I see joint families making a comeback after a long spell of nuclear families, or ones spread across geographies. We already see it happening in urban societies. Yes, generations often do not live under the same roof, as it would need a large house in the age of apartments. I see working-age people buying properties close to them for both sets of parents, and sometimes for siblings and cousins too. So, it is like a closely-distributed joint family. You have your independence and you also have your family around. As this gets mainstreamed, demand for old-age homes that are becoming a mandatory investment could fall.
Will I see people giving up cars for public transport? Well, I hope so, once we are done with the circle of living our aspiration of driving our own cars, or get tired of being constantly stuck in city traffic.
The larger wisdom is that whatever we think is not classy today could be so in a few years’ time. So, carry your own food for that flight instead of consuming the overpriced, stale, processed food offered.
The chakra or wheel is a sacred symbol for a reason—to remind us of the cyclical nature of the world.
Read all columns by Anuradha Goyal
Author and founder of IndiTales
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