You know what is great about being from a middle-class family – the fact that you learn to reuse resources, thereby becoming a silent yet hugely contributing eco-warrior.
Come on, we all know it helps in removing the wrinkles of the sheet and prepping it for another journey!
I belong to a middle-class family and that too a family in which everyone excelled at innovation. So while my father used old books to make a lovely centrepiece, my mother brought her ingenuity to things like plastic milk packets, gifts we got on birthdays, and the wrapping paper in which they came.
Did you just raise your eyebrows and think uhhh.. Soooo middle-class (a la Maya Sarabhai)! I bet most of you have wrapping paper right under the mattress.
Come on guys all of us have been doing this forever: Straightening it under the mattress and sending it further on a new journey. And there is no shame in owning the fact that this is in fact good for our environment. Well, we did more than that! My mother and now I use the silver side of the paper to line the walls of the small temple in the house. Because every sheet will have a silver back, however snazzy the front maybe, we have kept to this practice over the years, changing every time it shows any sign of wear, tear or soot depositions.
I have also used the front side (think electric blue at the moment) in my kitchen to cover the piece of the wall against my gas to:
- Decorate and bring the kitchen alive with some bright colours.
- Save the tiles on the wall from the sputtering, splattering tadka.
Another true mark of belonging to the middle-class families would be the use of gifts that you had received on your birthdays at appropriate places. If you got two similar sounding games say word-building games, then one would go into the kitty and one would be given to the kids. This too is a huge but undermined space saving tactic. It is the need of the hour as most of us now live in cramped houses with kid’s cupboards bursting with board games, stuffed toys and books alike.
So if like me you too belong to the middle-class, know this unsung we might remain, but the earth is a better place because of our unending ways of reusing the glittery gift wrapping paper.
Keep blowing the Trumpet! This & many more stories await in the pages!
