Battling the plastic food-print

I moved cities recently and in my quest to savor my privacy decided to rent a single bedroom flat / apartment just for myself. I managed to find one in a quaint society!? Imagine a residence over-looking landscaped gardens, a promenade lined with palm-trees and chalets in the foremost concrete jungle of the country! A house all to myself meant being in boxers without getting taunted, playing loud music sans the objections, dining in the drawing room without having to clean up right-after, singing in the bathroom (you have no idea how discordant I am!) with utter insouciance amongst other unmentionable things. Whilst I was mooning over this surreal life it completely skipped my mind that the house had no cooking gas connection.

My apartment in itself is a nice compact place to retire at the end of the day but the kitchen is sparsely used for obvious reasons. I usually find myself seated on the huge granite platform in the kitchen during overtly long telephonic conversations with friends, folks or my wife’s lovers (stop gaping, I am married to my job) gazing at the visual-hubbub the society offers (now you know why I am so lost while on the phone) through the huge window that runs the length of the platform and here begins my plastic woes!

Food is always ordered from one of the many restaurants in the neighborhood and almost anything that is delivered, be it bread, pan-cakes, gravy or accompaniments is either wrapped or packed in cheap plastic. In the beginning I paid no heed to this as I was intensely occupied with my new wife (they always demand too much attention in the beginning, don’t they?), but soon the amount of plastic I was surrounded by each time I had a meal was very perceptible and disturbing. I could still not react to it as days passed by in a daze and I had no obverse. But last week, when I was home for supper on most evenings, thanks to a relenting wife who decided to swing with her other lovers for a bit, I had had enough of it. I decided to make amends. So, when I called up a restaurant to order grub I made it a point to ask them if they could pack the stuff in paper or use a metal foil instead of plastic and proceeded with the order only if they acceded. Soon pancakes were wrapped in butter paper, breads came dressed in foils and the gravy glanced at me out of little paper cartons, I was satisfied.

My wife suddenly decided that she was going to make a fleeting visit back home for the weekend and so I was forced to spend long hours with her on Saturday tending to her needs. I woke up Sunday morning, knackered, only find my wife missing again!! (Is she fickle or what?) I was too tired to go out for my morning fix and so called a café to enquire if they could deliver a cuppa home (I had seen them deliver coffee in thermal flasks earlier). “Yessire” on the phone and I was warming up to nice hot coffee brewed to perfection. In fifteen minutes I heard a knock on the door, I knew my stimulant was calling out to me! I reached for the door, a mug in my hand (I know it feels like prison, but what the hell, with the wife gone, freedom was guaranteed) and saw a young boy outside. I hurriedly searched for a flask in his hand but there was no sign of it. I thought he must have come for something else and asked, “Whaaat..?”, when he extended his hand clutching a plastic bag and in a tone that felt like a retort answered, “Your coffee!” I looked at it in abject disgust, squinched my eyes, pouted and enquired as to why he didn’t deliver in a flask to which he replied that they used flasks only for two cups or more. I went “Grrrrrr” in my head, held out a twenty and grabbed the bag.

The boy was gone but the bag lay there clumsily on the tea-poi. Curiously I reached for it and held it in my palms. It felt warm. I put my hand into the bag and reached for another small ball of plastic which was warmer than the bag itself and housed the concoction like a balloon laden with water. I wanted to throw it straight into the dumpster but the thought of the liquid soiling the bin made me averse to that idea. “Perhaps I should flush it down the sink”, I said to myself, and emptied the contents into the mug after carefully puncturing the thin plastic bag. Suddenly, I found myself engulfed in aroma which arrives when very hot water is forced through freshly ground peaberry. “Smells good”, I blurted and instinctively took a tiny sip.

Aaah… caffeine… sip, little-sip, slurp, deep-breath, little-sip, sip, sip, gulp… smile …

Life goes on!