The Autobiography of a plastic bag

It's my birthday today - hooray! Another year gone by, and barely any signs of ageing! I look as clean and fresh as the day as I was brought into this world.

I don't quite remember the plant where I was manufactured along with millions of identical siblings. Each of us started off as small pellets, uniformly spherical and white in color, and were fed through end of a giant machine that heated the pellets and eventually forced us into the shape that you are all familiar with - two handles supporting a big cavity. We then passed through an assembly line, where the logo of a big box retail store was stamped on our front and back, with an added warning "Suffocation hazard - please keep away from small children". There was also a small symbol made up of three arrows pointing at one another, an indication to the user that I could actually be sent back and recycled into a new version of myself.

We were all put into a large box and shipped halfway across the country and landed in the go-down of a shopping mall. Each of us was somewhat excited but also nervous - for the next day, we would be placed at a checkout counter, where everything from clothes to cell phones, foodstuffs to books would be placed inside us and then we would be whisked away by a different owner. Where would we end up? Would we ever see each other again?

The next morning, we were all pulled out in a big stack and placed next to the shop assistant who was ringing up the purchases. The barcode scanner started beeping and periodically, one of us would get opened up and an assortment of products would be shoved in till we were full. The scanning continued, and the next one was pulled from the pile. Till it was my turn, and I gasped a little as I was not prepared for the weight - not that I was not strong enough to hold it. The shopper, a pleasant looking middle aged lady deftly swiped her credit card, signed her name with a flourish, and motioned to her helper to pick up the 5 bags she had paid for and take it out to her car.

We were tossed into the back of large SUV and driven out of the mall, towards a swanky residential complex that had just been built on the outskirts of the city - one of those "gated" communities, with manicured lawns, plenty of open space and greenery. I could only imagine what the inside of the house would look like - fine marble, recessed lighting, paintings by famous artists decorating the walls.

My day dreams were rudely interrupted as I was quickly emptied of my contents and thrown to one side of the room. Clearly, the shopper wanted to examine her purchases immediately and not wait. We lay in a corner of the room for a few hours, before we were picked up by the maid who took us into the kitchen.

And put us down next to a large waste bin.

So that was to be my fate - a shiny plastic bag, in perfect condition, would soon be used as a dumping ground for all the waste generated in the house. I grimaced at the thought of being filled with used tea bags, vegetable peelings, dress labels, leftover food - maybe even cigarette butts. Yuck - the very thought repulsed me, even though I was designed to hold all of these without any leaks. After all, that was the beauty of plastics - waterproof, leakproof, flexible, strong!

A week later, I was taken out from the bin and carried all the way to the nearby compound wall. The maid tied a nice little bow with my handles and gently lobbed me over to the other side. I landed on a mix of rocks and grass, and rolled to a halt surrounded by dozens of other similarly filled plastic bags, all of whom had started their lives not too long ago, but were now bearing the detritus of their human users.

"When did you get here?" I casually asked a bag next to me. He looked a little scuffed but seemed to be pretty content.

"About a week ago - but we are going to be moved soon".

"Oh really - where do we go?"

"The Municipal corporation will come by and take us to the landfill"

"What's a landfill?" I asked naively

"You'll find out soon enough - don't worry, there are lots more like us out there"

So I waited and waited, and sure enough, a truck drove up, a few people jumped off and started collecting us all and tossing us into the back. We drove away from the gated community, and the houses started to look more run down, and the people around us were clearly poor. I also started to smell a really foul odour, that was nothing like I had ever experienced before.

"What is that stench?" I asked my friend

"That's the landfill" he replied. "Don't worry, I'm told that you get used to it pretty quickly"

And that's when I saw it, as the truck took a curve in the road - a veritable mountain that loomed ahead of us. We were still a few miles away, but it already dominated the horizon, and I could only imagine what it would like from the top. The truck made its way to the base and started a tortuous climb that took almost a half hour, the stench almost unbearable by now.

We finally reached the top where the truck tipped its load backwards, and we all came crashing onto the top of the landfill. Half of us split open with the force of the impact, all the food, plastic, glass from our insides spilling out under the open sky. Overhead, there was a circular procession of birds, some of  which would periodically descend to peck at any edible material before rising again to join the aerial chakra.

"What happens now?" I asked my friend of a few hours

"Nothing much - unless we happen to get blown away by the wind, or we have a fire"

"FIRE?" I gasped in alarm

"Yeah, all this rotting food generates methane, and once in a while it catches fire"

"Does it happen often?"

"Oh, there are fires going on right now  somewhere on this landfill - it's just a question of when they end up where we are"

"Why can't they find a way to stop it?"

"Costs too much. As long as the landfill is far enough away from the rich folks, they could care less about what happens here. And the locals have become so used to it, they have found a way to profit from us"

"How's that?"

As I finished the question, I made out a group of small children who had emerged and were scrambling around picking up things and putting them in bags.

"What are they doing?"

"Making money. They take components that can be recycled or reused and take it back down"

"Why couldn't they just not bring it up here in the first place?"

"You're just full of questions, aren't you? You think the place you came from could be bothered to separate different materials in the house?"

No, they couldn't, I thought to myself. Pity though, it would have saved these kids from having to stumble around barefoot, risking their long term health - many of them would get infections from being exposed to toxins and other dangerous materials casually tossed out by families who did not understand the consequences of their actions.

"What about getting blown away?"

"Happens a lot to us plastic bags. Mostly we end up in a canal or stream, or in the stomach of a fish or bird. Often fatal for them, but we are pretty resistant to gastric juices"

The idea of getting swallowed by some creature and spending the rest of my life in its gut made me nauseous - or that could have been from the stench rising all around to which I was still not accustomed. The kids seemed to have found whatever little they could carry back and had wandered off back to their homes. Somehow they seemed content, as though they appreciated having this eyesore near their homes for the little benefit it brought to their lives. I could only imagine the horror of the residents of the gated community I had been in earlier that day if they found themselves living next to to this dump.

By now the sun was moving closer to the horizon, setting fire to the clouds overhead that went from light to dark pink to an angry red before fading completely, to be replaced with a few stars and the reflected glow from the massive city that lay to one side. I imagined what might be happening in all those houses as more trash was piled into plastic bags like myself, taken outside and tossed into a heap, picked up by a truck the next day and brought here to lie next to me. I drifted off to sleep.

Sunrise the next day revealed a fire that had started in another part of the dump, the smoke from which was starting to blow towards the city, choking its residents. Thousands of plastic bags like myself were going up in flames, releasing toxic fumes as they escaped their prison on this mountain of garbage.

Less than an hour later, a fresh load of trucks came by and covered us up. Gone was my view of the sky, the clouds, sunrises and sunsets. My friend who had been close by got pushed to a different part of the dump, and now I was surrounded mostly by rotting vegetables and meat bones. Anything and everything that could be bought or made was there - a cornucopia of human endeavour, piled hundreds of feet high.

That was a long time ago, and I'm probably fifty feet deep in this pile of trash now. Even my claim to this being my birthday is somewhat tongue in cheek - I have no way of keeping track of time anymore. But thanks to the wonderful work of the scientists and engineers that made me, I know I will be around a lot longer - plastic bags can last over a hundred years with no adverse effects. So perhaps I'm fifty today, or eighty, or crossed the century mark and don't know it.

Millions of people pass by this mountain I call home, close their noses, and move on. They carry in their hands things they have bought for themselves or their families, food, clothing, toys, gadgets - all neatly wrapped in plastic. If anything is longer lasting than I am, it is the manner in which humans cling to their existing lifestyles. And so the vicious cycle continues...

The Art of Empathy

For those of you who enjoy TED talks, I will point you to one in particular - on the importance of empathy, by Sam Richards. In this extremely provocative, yet highly enlightening, presentation, the speaker goes through an imaginary scenario where China, not the US, is leading a uni-polar world, and is exploiting the resources of the US to maintain its standard of living. He shows real pictures of brightly light Chinese cities, upper class Chinese wearing the latest fashions and using the newest gadgets, and contrasts that with grim US towns that have been run down over years of neglect. The most shocking moment comes when he asks the audience to imagine that the Chinese are using American troops to control the average American citizen who resents the manner in which this foreign intruder is making his life hell.

If you haven't figured it out already, what Sam Richards is trying to get his audience to experience is the life of an average citizen of Iraq - one whose nation has been occupied by the US for over a dozen years, and faces the same kind of hostility from US soldiers who barge into their houses, arrest them on suspicion of terrorism and generally maintain an air of superiority at all times. Again, real photos of Iraqis being mistreated and their sense of fear whenever Americans are around are shown to the audience. Sam constantly asks - "Can you feel it? Can you go there?" as though the audience has to physically move to a different location in order to understand what it means to be an Iraqi.

The world today is all about globalization and economic growth and who will be the next unicorn. The population has burgeoned to over 7 billion and while there are a handful of super-rich and lots of people in the middle class, unfortunately the number of people who are still poor, lack basic amenities, are deprived of their rights as humans and therefore are often regarded as being on the fringes of society, are still too large. While the UN in 1948 drew up the Universal declaration of human rights, that continues to be cited to this day in instances of war, genocide, famine, economic depression and crimes against women and children, the reality is that most of us choose to just not care. It is akin to a Sam Harris asking us "Can you go there?" and we ignore the question, or act as though it is not our business.

Most countries, apart from a few enlightened ones that have risen above the rhetoric, are focused on economic growth and providing jobs for their people. Jobs that require not just a school education, but increasingly a Bachelors, Masters or even PhD! And as the focus on academic excellence has gone up, with specializations that just a decade ago did not even exist, what has gone down is the art of empathy - the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and see the world through their eyes. We don't need to focus on churning out more engineers, doctors, lawyers or financial analysts - what we do need as a nation and a global community is more empathizers.

One must be careful to not confuse empathy with sympathy - the latter has a very negative connotation, and usually does not result in any positive action to rectify a situation. Very often, the situation cannot be rectified - for example, expressing sympathy at the loss of a loved one. Empathy on the other hand, should lead to a sense of increased power for the person who puts themselves in another's situation. Try it for yourself - when in a public place, observe those around you and try to imagine their lives. The auto rickshaw driver may not be as well educated as you, but surely there is some basic humanity that connects you both? The person behind the ticket booth at the metro also has to commute - what is his day like? And do you doubt that the chaiwallah now doesn't dream that maybe one day his son could be the PM?

It is unfortunate that globalization, while bringing people from different parts of the world into contact with one another, is increasingly leading to greater hostility between different groups. That civilizations have clashed for millennia is well-known; at the same time, interaction between the East and West also led to great advances in all fields of human endeavour - think Marco Polo and Kubla Khan, the monsoon trade between India and the Arab world, and the Greek influence through much of Western Asia. Indians increasingly are traveling abroad and seeing Japan, Turkey, Norway, Australia - not to mention the perennial favorites US and UK - but are they actually learning what it means to be Japanese, Turk or Norwegian? And from that knowledge, can they learn something that might make their lives, communities and societies better for all?

The debate on intolerance that has taken up so much air time and column inches in the Indian, as well as foreign, media, has sadly not recognized that a root cause for intolerance is a lack of empathy. It is far easier to typecast someone as evil or anti-national than it is to attempt to understand them. And while empathy has its limits, it needs to occupy a more important place in our lives. If you have any doubts, just ask Sam Richards.

The accidental motorist

Imagine waking up one morning with the breaking news of a plane crash in which there were no survivors.

Not just a small plane with a few dozen people, but a Boeing 747 or Airbus 380 with 400 passengers.

Gone from the face of the earth.

You would obviously be shocked at the magnitude of this tragedy, and there would be a massive investigation to understand what happened, and how it could be prevented from happening again.

Now imagine waking up the next day, and seeing the same headline. Another plane, another 400 gone.

And again the next day. And the next. And the next.

Till you come to midnight on December 31, and you realize that the entire year has gone by, and every single day, 400 people have died in plane crash.

Before you dismiss this as the most unbelievable story of all time, let me assure you that it is completely true. This has been happening for the past several years, and we are completely blind to it.

The roughly 240,000 people who died on Indian roads (2013 WHO figures - likely to be higher in 2015) are equivalent to not just one plane crash every day, but two, for an entire year!

And yet we as a nation are totally oblivious to this, and continue to drive rashly, pay scant attention to
safety norms and disregard all laws that are put in place to preserve human life.

There is a reason for this, and it comes down entirely to the human tendency to ignore risks that are large in number but with a minimal impact in each instance. In simple terms, that means we focus more on a single plane crash with 400 deaths than we would on 400 car crashes with a single occupant fatality. The few instances where the person involved in this incident happens to be a celebrity of sorts gets a huge amount of attention, but that quickly dies down once the media moves to another "masala" topic.

Some would argue that we are a fatalistic lot - after all, the Almighty has decided when he wants to have us join him, so what are mere traffic lights, zebra crossings and speed limits going to prevent? If your time has come, then there's nothing you can do about it. Hindus will point to reincarnation and the fact that they are fated to return anyway - Muslims will simply say "Insha'Allah".

I happen to belong to the camp that argues that this is simple a question of discipline, or lack thereof - something that we seem to adhere to in most other walks of life, but somehow forget once we are behind the wheel, or crossing a road. From birth, we are taught to be obedient - to parents and elders at home, then teachers at school. That obedience goes out the window, however, when we come face to face with a person in khaki. In the school morning assembly, we stand in a nice orderly queue, and walk single file back to class under the watchful gaze of the principal. Put us behind the wheel of a car, and that nice orderly queue degenerates to what can only be described as Brownian motion of dust particles.

Prof Raghunathan of IIM-A has explained this dilemma elegantly in his book "Games Indians Play" - through the lens of game theory. When faced with a choice, if you choose to maximize your benefit, it results in a negative outcome for the other person. If you decide to be altruistic and maximize the overall benefit of both parties, however, you get a smaller individual reward. Let's see how this works in practice.

Imagine you're driving your car on the road, following a long line of other cars (contrary to virtually all car ads, no one has the luxury of driving down an empty highway with beautiful scenery in the background!) If you were in most other parts of the world, you would follow the car in front of you, occupying the space that it has vacated. If that car slows down, you slow down. If it stops, you stop. The person behind you does the same thing, as does the one to your left and right. You occasionally change lanes if you want to go a little faster, but recognize that your choosing to drive at 100 while everyone else is at 50 will make you the odd one out and incur a penalty.

In India, this orderly scenario is turned upside down, with every driver seeking to find the shortest way to fill a gap that is often several meters in front of them. Never mind that there are five other cars between you and that space - your mission is to get to that space as quickly as possible.

And therein lies the crux of the problem - everyone rushing to get ahead when an objective analysis of the situation would tell you that the appropriate solution is to follow the leader. And while penalties for speeding do exist, the Indian motorist is particularly skilled in the art of wriggling out of such situations either through pleas or threats depending on their socio-economic status.

The problem is compounded by the fact that, as compared with most other countries, the diversity of objects on India's roads is unparalleled. We have everything ranging from a conventional car to two-wheelers (motorized and human powered), three-wheelers, animals (under human control and free roaming), pushcarts, buses, trucks and, of course, pedestrians. The range of speeds is all the way from 1 to 100 kmph (or higher at early hours of the morning). And we somehow expect all of these to exist harmoniously without any incidents.

The first step clearly would be to reduce the variety of transport options. It is unfortunate that the Tata Nano failed to takeoff, as it would have moved a large number of families moving around on two-wheelers to cars which are considerably more stable and less able to squeeze themselves into small spaces. While auto-rickshaws are convenient, replacing them with high capacity buses is more conducive to orderly road traffic.

Once you are down to just cars and buses, the next step will be to segregate space for pedestrians. Every year, places like Zurich, Tokyo, Melbourne and Vancouver make it to the top of the list of most livable cities in no small part because of their emphasis on providing options for walking. Most Indian cities, on the other hand, pay lip service to the pedestrian, with excavated pavements, vendor carts and large trees blocking the path of those brave souls who often have no choice but to walk. As a result, they end up walking in the road along with vehicles. Attributing this to a large population is no excuse - most cities in Europe and other Asian countries are as crowded as Delhi or Mumbai but are able to manage this based on good planning. Making cities more walkable will not just reduce traffic incidents, but is also recognized as a solution to climate change as well as the growing problem of obesity around the world. Having a fitter and healthier population is infinitely better than having to spend money on accident victims.

Finally, the discipline of maintaining order on the roads and awareness of safety has to start as early as possible in school. Children have been used to great effect in advertising to bring about behavioral change in their parents - from not bursting crackers at Diwali to giving up smoking. A comprehensive awareness program in schools, with the transference of those learnings to their parents, will go a long way in ensuring that the next generation of drivers will regard any accident, no matter how small, as an aberration that cannot be accepted. The autonomous car revolution may one day render all of this moot, but till that time, we have to take responsibility to keep people safe.