How Long Is Thirty Years?

It is story time again.

Long, long ago, there was a little girl who wanted to swim in the lake near her house. For all practical purposes, her family owned it - they cleaned it, bred fish in the lake, planted trees around it to provide shade to a tired traveller, and they also had bath in the same lake.

The boys would go first. At 7am in the morning, they would be woken up by their mothers, given a bit of neem to chew on (so much for oral health nowadays), and spanked off to the lake with a bit of charcoal and mud mixture for scrubbing (again, so much for shower gels and bath salts).

The girls went at 12 noon, when the boys were done and the women of the house were done clearing up breakfast and had lunch almost ready. The would wind their sarees around them, step into the water, scrub themselves and laugh in groups. Small boys of the family would stand guard to make sure bobody took their fresh clothes away. They would also keep lookout for animals.

The women would step out of the water half an hour later, drape their wet sarees around and laugh all the way home.

Lakes were clean enough. The little girl noticed that the water was so clean, it cleaned your hair and scalp out too. No need for a shampoo.

Thirty years hence, a rubber factory stands where the lake once was. In the middle of what is now Kolkata's busiest street. Smog is thick and it is difficult to breath after sunset. There is, of course, no lake anymore - they filled it up with gravel and concrete.

Today, that little girl's daughter would not dare to step into a water body for fear of contracting something fatal. The only clean lake she has seen are the pristine Gangetic waters at Rishikesh, where you still don't need shampoo. Water you can drink should you feel thirsty while bathing.

Thirty years is, apparently, enough time to alter a landscape permanently. To make lakes poisonous. To clog them with plastic so the fish die and there is no longer any aquatic life to clean out the lake naturally.

Thirty years is, apparently, long enough time for the little girl to say "It feels like a different century altogether."