Head over heart
When we are young, we feel strongly about preserving our planet; as we mature, our talk of sustainability becomes a mere lip service

By Meha Mathur
If you are not a socialist at 20, you don’t have a heart, if you are not a capitalist at 40, you don’t have a head.

Why don’t you switch off the fan? Put off the light if no one is using that room? No, it’s not me, who has been writing this column for 24 months now, who’s ordering around my colleagues in the office and kids at home to be wise with electricity. It’s my young ones at home who have assumed the dictator’s role, and at the receiving end is yours truly. So powerful is the message that the teachers have given, about the need to save electricity that the two kids have become green police.

At times, when I am on the defensive, I have to take shelter in the riposte, “Likewise I ask you not to waste food. Why don’t you respect the need for economy with food?”

Maybe on this front (food) too, it’s the teacher’s word that will do the magic, not the parents. It’s not just about rigidly following what the teacher has prescribed in the class.

My kids have, and, I believe their peers too would have, started questioning established norms, seeing the grey areas of the green debate, and seeing through the charade of the lip service in many green initiatives. At the IIFA Awards held a couple of months ago the Green Globe Initiative was launched.

A slew of Bollywood stars, who had been flown all the way to Bangkok to attend the gala ceremony, vouched that they do their bit for environment by switching off lights and putting off taps when not needed.

This was followed by dance sequences with most intensive sound and light effects. Surely these performances were not powered by wind or sun energy! Surprising that the organisers did not see the point, because the kids sitting next to me were astonished at the contradiction.

Similarly, in one of the commercials now flashing on TV channels, a voice says, ‘Maine kal ko dekha hai’, and a pristine beach turns into a concrete jungle with the help of graphics. “Is this how the kal (tomorrow) will look like where there is no tree?” the eight-year-old points out every time the ad appears.

Some sharp observations these, enough to make a parent proud. But I wonder, how long will the two kids sustain their passion for environment.

As one goes through school life and then a college life, the love for a green, clean earth is only natural. One is an idealist and thinks, “Now that we have arrived, we will transform the world.” The unfortunate transition happens when one enters work life and then parenthood.

Priorities change, and the concern for a greener, cleaner earth is replaced with securing the best future for your own child. Environment concern gets confined to switching off lights. Those who don’t make that transition are sadly chided at for being behind times, backward-looking folks, incapable of marching with the times.

They might have seemed to be doing something fashionable when they were in college, but now, they appear to be mavericks. Every time, when I pass the construction site of the Commonwealth Games Village along Yamuna River, where a handful of environmentalists have been camping for many months now, at the most inhospitable spot, I think of how lonely they have become in their steadfastness.

—The author is the Executive editor of Management Compass and Career Choices