Lime juice, nostalgia and the environment

Fruit juices are an all time favorite with me and my family. All the better, if, its freshly prepared. And nothing more delightful than freshly squeezed lime juice. While making a list of things to buy from the grocer, of all the oft-repeated items, fresh lime tops the list.

Lime juice needs no introduction! Needless to talk about its nutrition facts. A rich source of Vitamin C, I remember the umpteen times I cured common cold with what I call 'Vitamin C shots'. That is just concentrated fresh lime juice taken at frequent intervals as soon as you sense the possible advent of a common cold. Simple enough, this has been a sensible solution so far. The cure is so simple that the OTC drugs for Common cold don't even deserve a comparison with this cure, straight from Mother Nature!

As far as my understanding and observation goes, fresh lime grows abundantly in most tropical climates without the intervention of any pesticides. No additional pampering by fertilizers either. Then, why ignore this king of juices? Say convenience. There we come to the most common culprit - Convenience. Why take the pains to squeeze the juice, then add sugar/ salt, then stir it and for those of us who don't like anything solid in our smooth juices, we need to strain it! It must be so strenuous to make a glass of fresh lime juice! And of course, devoid of any glamour value, lime juice is not the 'in' thing today. It's not seen as a drink that one would want to flaunt in front of guests.

The alternates are convenience advocates. We embraced the ready-to-drink category like fish to water. When time is such a premium, when we are tagged and judged by the brands we choose, where does fresh lime stand a chance? I have friends who are of the opinion that this one life must be lived to the fullest, sans worrying about the ingredients written in fine print on food/ beverage packs. Why waste time reading up all that and then getting worked up? Economy must grow. Money must roll. Consumerism must grow in leaps and bounds. People should swarm shopping malls and grocery stores! We have only one life. We must live it to the fullest. Amidst all this sight, sound and fury, activism for the natural is also on the rise. I don't refer to the 'organic' mania which is more a status symbol these days. Some hope, that is for sure.


Back to my love for the lime. It dates back to my eager-beaver days of the youth. Even to my childhood days. My love affair with the lime started with my visits to my Mother's house. Nestled in quiet, those days whispered sweet nothings to me, endlessly. We had to board buses, take ferries, travel by boats to reach my Mother's house then. A good 4 hour journey it used to be. Under the sweltering sun, if it was the Summer vacation time. Finally get down from the Bus and climb a hill which almost seemed to be at a 90 degree angle from the road. After the steep climb uphill, to much relief there is plain land and then descend downhill to reach the foot of the house. That is where one of the fresh lime trees were grown. While walking towards the kitchen, I would pluck a few and promptly hand them over to grandma as soon as I entered the kitchen. I wouldn't talk for the first few minutes, I would eagerly look at Grandma and wait for my welcome drink! She prepared it with water from the courtyard well. There, my lime juice is ready! Then, for a few moments, heaven decides to come down to the kitchen of my Mother's house!.......Blissful moments, I must say!

Then, for the next 2 months, until the Summer vacation gets over, its every day Lime juice! The fresh fragrance of freshly squeezed lime is so fresh in my memory....not the best English, but even today, those memories linger.

Old fashioned.
Stricken by lime juice nostalgia.
Coupled with some degree of love for the environment.
The result is an over-arching love for the fresh juices. Most often, I don't hesitate to shun the packaged juice options. Whenever I buy one of these, I drink the juice (which is not even half as good!) and then feel guilty about throwing the pack into the garbage bag. After all, I live by the theory that what is not good for the Earth isn't good for me, either!

Branding, Consumption and the environment

Can branding and the environment go together? At the face of it, I don’t think they do. Think about the food choices that we have these days. Over here, we are spoilt for choice. Any kind of food is up for grabs in any season, in any form, in any place that we choose to have it from. Heavily processed and elaborately packaged. With at least 10 chemicals added to it. Multiple brands to choose from. Each promoted through various means.

Coming to think of it, I wonder if packaging is the actual culprit, and not branding. May be both. The other day I bought some garlic, some potatoes and some onions! Once and for a long time sold as just commodities, today, even they are not spared from branding. And how could I reuse all those packaging? It adds a great deal of convenience to the shopper and to the seller as well. Merchandise looks glamorous. Even the routine garlic and onions! Berries from Chile. They were so fresh and supple. My one year old didn’t spare any for us. But the agony it gave me was terrible. Looking at the perforated plastic zip lock in which it came to me, I was at my wits’ end.

Croaker. Never frozen. Could be from the neighbouring lake. But, guess what it came in? In a big zip lock! So easy to carry it home – no fear of fish stench leaking into the other purchase. Happy better half who bought it home intact. I took the fish out and then threw the zip pouch out for fear of the fish stench lingering in my kitchen. The details are quite disgusting, but the zip lock smelled so fishy that there was no way I could reuse it. And why break my head over reusing this particular zip lock; many more would find their way into my kitchen soon.

The ready to eat category is quite evolved in this part of the world. I remember having many meetings with a category player in Bangalore who had just ventured into the business. Unable to cope with the grossly under-developed freezer chain in Bangalore/ India, they couldn’t expand their business. We felt sad that we couldn’t partner them in their branding endeavors either. But, looking back, I must feel happy that they did not. Even Reliance had plans to venture big time into the ready-to-eat category. Red-tape or accusations of political favouritism, they couldn’t either. Knowing Reliance, they will soon because there is a huge market out there. But, at least a few years got spared in the mean time.

Talk about Food and Enviorment; one can go on and on. Food – if not local, has to be packaged with a great amount of care, has to undergo lot of processing, has to be shipped, transported from across continents, countries, counties to reach us here and now. Here and now is the guiding force these days. We want everything right here, right now. We are willing to pay any price for it. Little do we realize that our children will pay a huge price for it as they are stepping into a trembling planet with a lopsided eco-system. Is that what we want to leave behind? Just as we urge companies to be guided by the morality of profit, can we be guided by the morality of consumption?

Morality of Consumption.

I earnestly hope it becomes a buzz word, a moot point for introspection and action.