The Confession - Consumerism, Cleanliness, and Recycling

Even an ocean starts as one drop. 💧 That's where the last blog ended, and it's also where this one begins.

Last time, I told you about my drawer full of skincare products I never needed, all thanks to being thoroughly "influenced" by YouTube and Instagram Shorts. Since then, I've done a fair bit of unlearning to land on a routine that actually works for me, not one that just looked good in a 15-second video.

What made me rethink things

For most of my teens and twenties, I never gave a second thought to how my daily choices today were shaping tomorrow. Just living life, school, college, work, clothes, cosmetics, the occasional pointless drive because I felt like it.

Then came travel-based learning to other parts of India and the world. For example: Meghalaya in 2025. Not one street we visited was piled with waste, even the public toilets were spotless enough that I didn't have to hold it in till I got home 😛. Compare that to Virar or Ballia (home turf), where you sometimes navigate actual mountains of garbage just to get somewhere.

I tell colleagues abroad the beach is 20 minutes from my house. They picture paradise. Reality is a few million pieces of plastic having a party on the shore.

The people who shaped this

One memory did more than it should have. Years ago, Sonam and I were walking home from school, both cranky, mid-argument. I tore up a piece of paper and threw it on the ground. She got genuinely, uncharacteristically angry. Told me not to. I didn't listen. The anger faded by dinner. The guilt stuck around for 25 years. First real lesson: hold your trash a little longer if you have to.

That's basically brought me to three areas I've actually worked on: Consumerism, Cleanliness, and Recycling.

1- Consumerism

That little high right after buying something, offline or online, is unmatched. For years that was me on autopilot, Amazon, Myntra, Zara, H&M, running in the background of my life. Never repeat an outfit, always something new.

Then came the wardrobe cleanouts. T-shirts worn once, exiled to the back of the cupboard, only surfacing during Diwali ki safai. Eventually that got old, so I made myself some rules:

Less fast fashion, no polyester, Indian brands first, buy-expensive-buy-once over buy-cheap-buy-often, and zero impulse purchases (ask Anita, I send her ten reels a week and actually buy maybe one).

Buying less also meant, almost automatically, less packaging, less plastic, less stuff to eventually throw away. Which brings me to the next thing I got weirdly particular about.

2- Cleanliness

Yes, we need more dustbins. No, "ek bhi dustbin nahi hai" doesn't actually justify littering. Holding your trash a little longer, pocket, bag, wherever, until you find a bin isn't some Olympic feat. I don't throw waste on the road. Full stop. My jeans pocket has made sacrifices.

"Dustbin se nikalke raste pe hi aa jata hai" is fair, but it's not a free pass to skip our own part of the job.

3- Recycling

Marrying Bhanu came with a crash course in "why would you throw that away." Our old makeshift shoe shelf was headed for the bin until he stopped me, we painted it yellow, and it's now a bookshelf, arguably the prettiest thing in our house.

I've also stopped buying mini versions of everything. I know what actually works for me (I've tried the elaborate 10-step routines, I've failed every single time), so I just stick to the same kajal, lipstick, perfume, whatever's already working, instead of constantly "trying something new." I reuse old containers too, an old moisturizer bottle with a pump now holds homemade oil, no new plastic needed for that.

Bhanu's on the same page. He's been reusing the same plastic bag for seven months to bring home chicken for his three musketeers. It got to a point where the seller himself offered, "Bhaiya, main aapka doosra thaili de deta hoon." Bhanu, being Bhanu, said no thanks.

We carry cloth bags everywhere, especially for groceries, and we actively stop the sabji-wale bhaiya every time he reaches for a plastic bag out of habit.

Closing lines:

None of these changes are dramatic on their own. A reused bottle here, a refused plastic bag there. But that's sort of the point I keep coming back to, what if this is what most of us did, just the small stuff, consistently? Would it really stay this small?

The long journey:

I'll be honest, not everything budges. I still can't get my own parents to stop littering when there's no bin around. Every time I try, it turns into one of those arguments where "hume mat sikhao" gets thrown at me like a trump card. I haven't won that one yet. But I keep trying, every chance I get. Some battles are worth losing a hundred times if it means winning once.

At the end of the day, we're all out here trying to build a life for ourselves. Maybe it's time we also started thinking a little harder about what that life is quietly costing the next one.

We've got to start somewhere, right?

So that's my drop in the ocean. Messy, imperfect, occasionally fought over with a vegetable vendor, but a drop nonetheless. Yours is next. 💧