Jane DoeThe Kumar household was in that magical stupor which is only brought upon by a delicious and heavy homemade Sunday lunch. The kids, who were not so much of kids anymore, Rasika and Ravish were lazing in front of the TV while their dad had already slipped into deep sleep on the couch.
Rasika and her mother on a Sunday afternoon
Mrs. Kumar however wasn’t yet ready to begin her afternoon siesta, she had work to do. Cleaning the kitchen after a greasy meal of chole bhature was occupying her time and she was in a hurry to get done with it.
“Rasikaaaa! Beta, please throw the garbage outside the gate!” she screamed to jolt Rasika from her intense chat on her phone.
“Maaa!! Why can’t you just let me be, even on a Sunday!!” Rasika was very irritated at the thought of picking up the garbage bag just after her sumptuous lunch.
“What is this plastic bag Maa! How many times have I told you, we should start using paper bags or atleast keep them in a plastic dustbin!!” she squirmed looking at the dark green plastic bag in her mother’s hand.
Mom did not like it
“Enough with your lecture about being eco friendly! Our municipality truck comes whenever he wants to and takes the garbage, you want it all out in the open or what for our neighbors to see! And dustbin huh! So many ruffians in our society, one of them might just pick the bin and go away. How many bins is your father going to afford!? Please just take it and dump it near our gate! Go!” Her mother was obviously in no mood to relent to her.
Rasika grumpily took the bag and went out. She just threw the bag a few steps away from their gate. Rasika knew it wasn’t the right way to discard garbage but she didn’t know better. She wondered what could be done to improve the situation in their neighbourhood when she saw that her bag was being torn apart by a cow which had just come there.
She tried to shoo away the cow, but it didn’t budge. She gave up and went back to her home, still wishing she could do something. But she realized that no one would help her as everyone always had a question “What’s in it for me?”
What goes around comes around
That evening, the doorbell rang and Rasika opened the door to the milkman. The Kumar household always got their milk from the local milkman, they prided that their milk was unadulterated and all natural unlike the ‘packetwala doodh’. But Mrs. Kumar was in for a shock that day.
“Maa ji, today will be the last day for the milk. Half my cows are sick, I really don’t know what to do! It’s so expensive to treat them!” the milkman started getting into the complaint mode.
This was a shocker to Mrs. Kumar, she started imagining the horrors of starting packet milk and was started barraging him with questions, “What happened suddenly? How can you stop giving us the milk! What happened to your cows?”
“Maa ji, since yesterday 2 of cows started getting sick so I took them to our veterinarian and on checking he said that they have eaten too many plastic bags and that’s making them sick!”
What goes around comes around! The plastic garbage bags came to haunt the Kumars where it hurt them.
Comments
Powered by Facebook Comments