When?

This afternoon, while my sister and I kept my mother company in the kitchen, the talk turned to Aishwarya's new found environmentalism. (What can I say? She's my sister. It was bound to happen.)

She was very disturbed by certain statistics she had learnt in school regarding the disposal of plastic materials (the exact values of which prove elusive at the moment). A very large percentage of plastic wastes in India are simply discarded on its roads by the careless and are left to accumulate in a wayside gutter until they clog our drainage systems and result in the overflowing of sewage water. (At this point, I would like to point out that the mushy garbage mulch that is the drainage river outside Ranka Colony on Bannerghatta Road originated in the very same way.) Moreover, that very afternoon, she had seen the campus sweepers cutting down a couple of the campus trees, which are supposedly government protected, for firewood.

I believe her exact words were,

"Mommy, I mean, like, how could anyone even do that! That sucks!"

That does suck.

In any case, she wanted to make a difference and galvanize people to a new environmental consciousness. She wanted our mother to help her get people to start recycling and stop cutting down trees.

I had never been prouder of her.

Inspite of my pride and my agreement with her sentiments, I found myself telling her that her plan would never work. The sweepers have to survive somehow. They haven't the money for a gas stove nor can they afford to buy firewood. IIM is the only place where they can cut down trees for free and get away with it. Secondly, India is too set in its ways to ever change. The very school children who hold fairs on recycling awareness, casually discard chocolate wrappers from the windows of their school bus. The whole cause, is useless, said I.

I was shocked at myself. When did I, who always believed in the environmentalist cause, who believed in teaching by example, become so cynical? Was it when I tried and failed to get IIM to circumvent their construction plans around invaluable, forty-odd-year old trees? Was it when I tried and failed in the ninth standard to get the primary school to plant trees on the school campus in honour of World Environment Day? Was it the during the last four years, when I had repeatedly tried and failed to convince my siblings not to burst firecrackers on Diwali and not to use synthetic colours a.k.a. poisonous chemicals on Holi?

Where did my belief that the world could change leave me? When did the hope that a greener India was possible desert me?