Reading in the time of digital distractions

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-should-you-invest-early-reading-habits-your-kid-sargam-gupta/

Why should today’s youth embrace books. In the past couple of years, I have hardly come across my students who read books. In the present digital world, everyone prefers to watch videos or reels or scroll down endlessly on social media sites. What does reading offer vs watching a social media site? Well, reading has several benefits. 

Benefits of reading 

When you read a book, it builds your imagination and creativity, increases knowledge and vocabulary, improves writing skills, memory and concentration, stimulates the brain, helps in critical thinking, and contributes to overall personal growth. Successful entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Bill Gates have been avid readers. They attribute their success to reading books which they say are a source of knowledge, ideas and helped them to incorporate them into their businesses.

Personal experiences 

My experience with reading is similar to the saying by George. R. R. Martin “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, a person who never reads, lives only once”. As a child, I remember reading Heidi. I visualized the mountains, grasses, flowers, sheep grazing, Alm-Uncle’s house and others. I felt I have seen the Swiss Alps where the story is set. It still remains one of my favourite books. The Diary of Anne Frank made me experience the lives of Jews and Ruskin Bond books made me feel the forest, rivers, mountains and railway tracks. R K Narayan books make me feel I know the fictional town Malgudi, its Sarayu River, Kabir Street, market, railway station, etc. Swami and his friends remind the happiness I derived in childhood through little things. My heart felt heavy for Anupama during her difficult times in Mahashweta. Birds, Beasts and Bandit: 14 days with Veerappan gave me a different opinion about the smuggler Veerappan and his survival strategies in the forest. Non-fictions like The Secret, Atomic Habits and Unposted Letter helped me shape my thinking, attitude, habits, relationships etc. What I experienced with a particular book might be completely different from what another person feels. My opinion about a book might be different from others. Every person’s viewpoint of a book is shaped by his/her life experiences, feelings, perspective towards life etc. Overall, books help us to travel to places and experience different occasions. Every book has a message, only our understanding of the message differs. 

Embrace digital reading 

The present digital world has provided an array of opportunities for readers. Digital books such as e-books and audio books are helping readers easily access books. Further, there are several sites that offer freely downloadable books either in pdf version or e-book reader formats. Earlier, I would buy books or borrow them from friends. Today also I do the same, but in lesser frequency. Now, mostly I download free books and read it on my kindle (e-book reader). There have been debates on reading from a hard copy vs soft copy. However, I feel we need to embrace the technology for out betterment and read from both hard and soft copy. Carrying an e-book reader during travel or anywhere, will make the book available for you to read at any time. E-book readers are like your digital library, you can download and store books. There are free and paid e-books on amazon also.

How to start reading? 

Now, it is easy to say, “READ BOOKS”🕮. But how are you going to begin? First of all, choose a book that interests you. It could be a fiction or non-fiction. You should only be curious to know the contents of the book. Begin with just one page a day. As reading one page a day becomes a habit, you can then increase it to two pages a day and so on. Once you begin to enjoy reading, it will naturally become a habit. Additionally, you could set a time and place to read every day and carry your book wherever you go. You can also join Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/), which helps you to mark books that you have read, wish to read, join the reading challenge, rate and review books etc. 

Once you begin to enjoy reading, you will appreciate the ‘Power of Reading’ and feel as Franka Zappa said, ‘So many books, so little time’. Happy reading!

Garbage worriers and garbage warriors

A few days before the lockdown began, while returning from the flour mill, I saw Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike’s (BBMP) garbage auto at one of the street corners. The two garbage collectors were segregating the collected garbage into wet and dry waste, as households had not done their job of segregation and had passed it on to the poor garbage collectors. Segregation by garbage collectors had to be done as the truck transporting waste would not take in mixed waste. Although there are rules specifying that households have to segregate waste, there seems to be certain places in Bangalore were it is not being done accordingly. Also, the BBMP has notified to penalise residents for not segregating waste. Looking at the two garbage collectors, my mind wandered off to people’s attitude towards waste and garbage collectors.

The garbage auto in my neighbourhood collects segregated waste unlike in some parts of Bangalore. Garbage man has divided  his auto into two parts, one for wet and another for dry waste. He stands in dry waste section and collects it, while we dump wet waste directly as this partition is towards the extreme end of the auto. Often, I have noticed that wet waste also had a mix of dry waste like shampoo sachets, toothbrush, bus tickets etc. Additionally, a few neighbours do not segregate their wet waste completely. Many a times, the garbage man yells at them for not segregating waste which has fallen on deaf ears till date. Well, I appreciate these neighbours were at least handing over their waste to the garbage collector rather than dumping it in empty sites or street corners like another neighbour. This particular neighbour feels handing over waste to garbage man is expensive because he charges Rs. 10/month! Even if you are not paying the garbage man he will still collect your waste because nowhere it is mentioned that garbage collector will not collect waste if he is not paid by the house owner. Some neighbours who give money grumble that garbage collectors also earn their salaries and are greedy for more. These households may not have given a thought to how much is the salary of a garbage collector, does he receive it on a regular basis and is it sufficient to survive in a city like Bangalore. This Rs. 10 being paid to the garbage collector has been same from when door to door garbage collection began in Bangalore, roughly 15 years back.  We still pay them the same amount, while prices of all other items have soared in the last decade.

Around three years back, before the garbage auto came into my street, a garbage cart pushed by an old lady (reminding me of my late grandmother) would collect waste. A neighbour living in first floor would throw her waste onto the road when the garbage cart arrived. The poor old lady had to pick it up and then put it in the cart, while other households would directly dump their waste into the cart. While some do not hand over waste, the ones who do, do it in a style!! The neighbour never realized that it was an old lady who was forced to work in spite of her age and that too physical hard labour job, pushing the cart around different streets and the cart gaining weight with entry into each street.  Although, the old lady would request the neighbour not to throw waste from first floor, again it fell on deaf ears. However, today this neighbour makes her way down to the garbage auto because if she happens to throw the waste from first floor, the garbage man will never pick it up, as he is already standing inside his auto and cannot afford to waste time to get off from it.

One family in the neighbourhood used to dispose all their waste into an empty site. Once their child turned a year old, they started handing over waste to the garbage collector. I still wonder what bought in this attitude change. A relative who shifted to Bangalore a couple of years ago, was full on blaming BBMP that they should not have made rules on waste segregation, instead composting at household should have been mandatory. ‘If it is mandatory will you do it?’ did not yield answers from her. When people cannot practice what they preach it is best for them not to suggest. A friend wanted me to have his composting bin which was freely distributed, as he felt I worked on something related to environment! So does it mean people working for conservation should compost and rest of them should not?

Lastly, I have the most hilarious story. It is a known fact that empty sites in Bangalore end up being waste dumps. But in the corner of my street atop a Pongamia tree a black plastic cover with waste was hanging for a couple of months. Someone from top floors must have flung their waste into an empty site which unfortunately landed up on the tree. It was later bought down when BESCOM staff were pruning branches that covered electric lines.

According to a study by T V Ramachandra and others from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (2018) per capita waste generation in Bangalore varies between 45.51 – 136.5 g/day of which organic waste is a major portion. If these garbage warriors did not turn up for even a week, can we bear the stink emanating from the waste? Their absence will only turn our houses into garbage yards. 

Waste segregation is very simple, it’s not a rocket science. Just keep two separate bins, one for wet and another for dry, rather than plastic covers for wet waste. Additionally, wet waste bin can be lined with paper to absorb moisture and paper can be discarded along with wet waste. It’s time we realize that we generate waste and need to dispose it off efficiently, otherwise we will end up being in a sea of diseases. Like someone said ‘garbage collectors are the cities doctors’, we need to treat them with respect and think over what would happen in their absence.