Reality With My Eyes

I was crossing Haryana when my eyes caught the paddy crops—it was harvest time for some farmers. For others, it would take another 5 to 6 days before they could harvest. I was in the car with a few relatives from Haryana, and curiosity got the better of me. I turned to them and asked, "What do you guys do with the remaining rice straw, the stubble?" One of them replied casually, "We use it as fodder for our cattle, and whatever is left, we simply burn it." "Okay," I said, pausing for a moment. Then I asked, "Why don't you cut the straw into little pieces with a thresher and let it decompose? You'd likely get better soil fertility for the next crop." He shook his head. "We can't do that because it takes 1 to 3 months for the stubble to decompose. We can't wait that long for the next crop. We have to sow wheat seeds by the end of October, otherwise the yield will be delayed or even ruined. So burning the leftover stubble is ...

Last weekend, I got a chance to visit a slum area in Delhi and teach some kids through an NGO called Pehchaan. As soon as I came out of the metro station, I was hit by a strong bad smell coming from an open black water ditch nearby i.e. nothing but Yamuna river. The heat was scorching, and I could imagine people even sleeping on the road close to that foul-smelling ditch. As we walked further, I saw narrow dirty lanes filled with garbage everywhere. Men were walking around without shirts, women were washing clothes right beside the narrow paths, and the detergent foam was spilling onto the road. Kids were running and playing in these small lanes along with some goats. I also noticed things like broken CCTV cameras and a boy coloring his mother’s hair right there in the open. It was a tough sight. We finally reached a small temple where I was supposed to teach a group of 7 to 8 children from 6th and 9th grades, all living in that slum. After some time, a group of 9th-grade students fro...