Window Seat: Don’t Waste Food

No matter where you live in India, marriage ceremonies are occasions for splurging on good food in great quantity. In fact the social prestige and status of the person whose son or daughter is getting married- rest on it. Or so they think. So there I was with a plate in hand at the buffet table. And I was pained at the wastage of food by people. They would take more on their plate than they could eat in a week. Only to dump it at the garbage bin. It seems so macabre. India is home to the largest number of hungry people in the world. In the 2021 Global Hunger Index, India ranks 101stout of the 116 countries. In fact India has a level of hunger that is serious. On the other hand India is in the front bench of the countries which wastes food. India hosts approximately 2.5 crore weddings every year. In every marriage ceremony approximately 10-15 per cent of the food is wasted, with a minimum of around 30-50 kg and maximum going up to 800 kg. This can be used to serve around 100-200 people on an average. Can’t we contain wastage of food? Can’t we plan properly? Do we have to offer so many dishes? Can we distribute the left-over food? There are organizations like Feed India which helps in distributing the food. Many people do it on their own. However, we need to be conscious about this colossus waste. Our scriptures say: Anna brahma. Food is god. Wastage of food is a sin. It is a crime against nature. World's only Sanskrit daily Sudharma turns 53 Sudharma, the only Sanskrit daily of the world was founded on July 15, 1970, by late KalaleNadadurVaradarajaIyengar, a Sanskrit scholar, and writer in Mysuru (erstwhile Mysore) in Karnataka, who was also the editor. He was also a publisher of Sanskrit books. The main aim of the paper was to propagate Sanskrit. Many people believed that the Sanskrit language does not have vocabulary sufficient to cover contemporary and complex day-to-day activities and developments. Publication of the paper was an attempt to dispel that myth. {"align":"center","id":199798,"sizeSlug":"full","linkDestination":"none"} After VaradarajaIyengar passed away on 5 August 1990 Sudharma was edited by his second son K.V. Sampath Kumar and his and his wife K.S. Jayalakshmi.Sampath Kumar was a Law graduate and a Sanskrit scholar Both have been awarded the Padma Shri in the Literature and Education-Journalism category in 2020. K.V. Sampath Kumar died of heart attack on 30 June 2021. This two-page newspaper has a daily circulation of around 4000 copies, with an annual subscription rate of INR 600 in India. Hundreds of readers from Japan, Germany, and the USA have also subscribed to Sudharma with an annual overseas subscription fee of $50. The majority of the subscribers of the newspaper are Sanskrit scholars and students. {"align":"center","id":199799,"sizeSlug":"full","linkDestination":"none"} Sulekha Ink Recently Bhubaneswar based writer-orator-editor PradyumnaSatpathy in his facebook post wrote a paean on Sulekha fountain pen ink. Fountain pen was used extensively till early eighties when ball point pens took over. Sulekha was the most popular fountain pen ink then and therefore anybody who has spent his or her childhood by early 1980s has a connect with Sulekha ink. {"align":"center","id":199800,"sizeSlug":"full","linkDestination":"none"} But there is more to Sulekha than being just a brand of ink. Its history is intertwined with the idea of a self-reliant India. In order to encourage swadeshi (made indigenously) products, Gandhiji requested Satish Das Gupta, ex-chemist of Kolkata based Bengal Chemicals to prepare a Swadeshi Ink for his use in 1932. Satish Das Gupta made the ink, named it Krishnadhara and stared selling it through the network of Khadi outlets. Later in the year Das Gupta handed over the recipe to Maitra brothers Shankaracharya and NaniGopal, instructing them to start making the ink commercially and call it Sulekha (there is another version that claims that the name “Sulekha” was coined by none other than poet laureate RabindraNath Tagore). It took Maitra brothers two years to commercially launch Sulekha Ink. It was promoted as India's answer to foreign made fountain pen ink. It became hugely popular and dominated the Indian market till mid-eighties. It is making a comeback of sorts with niche ink-products, writing instruments and stationaries. Tailpiece: Finally Finally after almost half a century, I got an answer to the question Rishi Kapoor asked in his debut film Bobby: "Baahar se koi andernaaa sake ander se koi baaharnaJaa sake Sochokabhiaisa ho to kya ho Sochokabhiaisa ho to kya ho"? .... as I was quarantined at home down with Covid. Bobby was released on 28 Sept. 1973 About the Author: Journalist turned media academician Mrinal Chatterjee lives in Dhenkanal, Odisha. He also writes fiction and plays. He can be reached at [email protected] DISCLAIMER This is the personal opinion of the author. The views expressed in this write up have nothing to do with those of prameyanews.com