Every once in a while there is a new flavour of the season, a new discussion point that occupies everyone’s attention – you start researching that topic, finding out more about it, talking about it (and every little nugget of information that you have managed to gather about it) at every party, every meeting, every Facebook post and every blog. It totally surrounds you and takes away all your mind space. What’s amazing about each great new flavour is that after a few weeks it slowly but surely goes out of circulation, no one really wants to talk about it any more, like I mean every one seems to be saturated with that topic and find the next new shiny thing to talk about. Its not like we have found the solution to that topic or that the topic has reached its logical conclusion. No, we just move on…to the next flavour…the next big thing that occupies us
To give an example and talk about the current flavour
In Delhi and all of North India it is the Pollution Levels. Yes it is a huge concern and we are all living in a gloomy gas chamber of toxic pollutants and we really should do something about it. Find every way to protect ourselves and the air around us and maybe also find ways to improve air quality (Duh! What can we do about that. It’s the governments job isn’t it. Nothing I can do…Wrong! But that is for another blog, am sure there are many such floating around on this topic, phones beeping away with message around this from the ton of different groups that one is a part of….)
But yes, of course we want to find out as much as we can about this topic as possible
Hang on…wasn’t this a problem last year as well? In fact, equally severe that schools had to shut down? We did all talk about this…even had that wonderfully unthought through idea on ‘odd even traffic’? (yes we did get a number of messages on social media, print media, TV, at parties, at meetings….everywhere)
The Flavour of the Season
And then what happened?
Well! It faded away or faded out!
No there was no solution to the problem. Maybe the air quality improved a tiny notch with ‘odd even’ Maybe there were talks about trucks not being allowed into the city, many more metro lines, farmers….oh yes, the farmers and their crop burning was a huge topic even then (something they have been doing for eons)…But that was it!
The topic did not reach a solid conclusion, we did not find a solution. We just got bored of it, accepted our fate, perhaps our bodies got used to higher levels of pollution and lower oxygen…there was a new flavour that took up our intellect
And low and behold! Like a bad penny the problem is back!
Now what?
Don’t worry, we will all discuss it for a few more days or maybe even weeks and then it will disappear.
Not the problem. Just the flavour!
photo credit: Mycroyance Seoul through the smog via photopin (license)
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