Whose environment is it anyway?

I live in an upmarket Kolkata locality, in a flat apartment of 8 houses where families of senior bureaucrats live. Last 20 years I have been appalled at the easy lifestyle and luxury that my brethren have led, but what I see now is enough to bring anyone to apoplectic rage.

Our building recently had a makeover. Most expensive marble was laid on the staircase, lot of beautification on the outside, with landscaping, coloured sandstone and marble motifs on the wall. The walls on every floor had a fresh coat of plastic paint.

The plumbing was overhauuled, the windows repaired, and as a result the building looks beautiful and gleaming.

But every evening as I leave for my evening jog or morning as I leave for office, my heart sinks....

The new plan has two electric bulbs on each floor. Each of the floors are small and have two large flats facing each other. One bulb would do...no, but some nitwit has decided that there will be two bulbs on each of the four floors. All the bulbs are kept on 24x7. I make it a point to switch off all the bulbs as I get in and out of the building during the day and extra bulbs during the night. We have police guards outside the gates, so we do not need bulbs shining all night on all the floors. However, this has not been take kindly by the inmates of our building and needless to say, I am not one of the popular people who lives here.

Secondly, the plastic wrappings of all the cement bags and other equipment packagings are piling up everyday and they look as if they are here to stay. I have asked the secretary of the building to send them to a recycling plant, but the pile seems to have been left untouched since the past month.

I am planning to take this up seriously or inform an activist group to come and do the needful. I am quite laid back otherwise but to see such blatant rape of the neighbourhood environment makes my hackles rise.

We are supposed to be the so-called enlightened members of the society, the opinion makers and implementers of policy for the nation. If we don't lead by example, then God save the environment.

Hue and View

Last week I woke up to find most of my girlfriends having a colour as their status on Facebook. Perplexed, I thought it must be the colour of their moods...however the next day newspapers carried a story on how someone had thought of a new way to promote breast cancer awareness by just mentioning the colour of a certain part of the lingerie....

This complete poverty of imagination must have come from some airhead who fancies herself to be a marketing guru. What's colour of the lingerie got to do with awareness about the deadly disease? This was supposed to be a girlie thing and no man was supposed to know what it meant. Sure enough it was all over the papers and obviously the men on FB understood what the colours were all about. Covert titillation? (no pun intended!)

I do sound very old-fashioned, but it surely beats my imagination to talk about something that is so private so openly. Talk about exibitionism....I was quite amazed to find women of all ages...coming out with the colour of the ahem, unknown, while the men on FB had the time of their lives reacting, responding and commenting on the colours the next day. Found the whole idea very cheap and what may have started with noble intentions got reduced to a pathetic excuse for extremely loose talk...

Obviously this became the talking point at most social dos...But I was nonplussed when I saw one FB status with attitude...None. Now, that's a first!