Like a dependable cliche, I came to Northwestern University (in Evanston, IL, "very walkable") as a high school graduate with little to no inkling of what life would be like. I enjoyed my independence, made mistakes, and met great people. I wanted to be a lobbyist. I was going to change the world. Unfortunately, I'm a horrible liar and realized that there is no way in hell I could make a good lobbyist. I transferred to the college of engineering and joined a group called Engineers for a Sustainable World. All of this leads me here. I'm older and wiser yet still a naive and idealistic NU environmental engineering master's student.
It's interesting. When I was growing up, I really hated being different. As an adolescent, being different is painful. I was Indian so there was no getting around it, and my parents, being true Indians, made it worse (I love you guys!). My mom would reuse everything: turning food packaging into food containers, converting old t-shirts into rags, reusing bags until they fell apart, organizing used paper towels by grime level, etc, . She would save the millions of drug company pens she received (my favorite was an inappropriately funny Levitra folding pen). Our house was a storage space for old items. If she couldn't reuse it, she would give it away to neighbors, friends, and relatives in India. I was so ashamed because I thought by giving worn out things to others, she was disrespecting them. If it isn't good enough for her to use, why should someone else have to use it? "How dare she?" I always thought, "Why can't she just throw it away?!" But, most embarrassing of all, she would outright REJECT GIFTS if she didn't think she could use them. She would unwrap a purse that someone has spent hours picking out for her and simply say, without blinking, "I don't want it. Take it back."
As much as I hated her for this, I've come to realize: my mom is an Indian and she is an environmentalist. Growing up in India, money was scarce and waste was an ultimate sin. The cyclic nature of life is ingrained in Hindu religion. You could say it is the more spiritual version of "conservation of mass". While it was easy for my mother to adopt these ideals, I grew up in America, where it requires a little more effort. As a kid, I wanted her to throw away perfectly usable materials to inevitably sit in a landfill for who knows how many years, rather than to serve a purpose. I've grown up since then, and I hope my new respect for the environment will inspire me to be just like my mom.
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| My mom and I on a pilgrimage to Vaishno Devi (in Jammu and Kashmir, India) |
I've started this blog to share my enthusiasm for sustainability, and to prove, once and for all, that a chemical engineer CAN have a conscience!
