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A Three Course Meal and a Dessert of Vomit

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It’s not any new information; we all very well know that due to global warming, the climatic changes occurred in past few years… resulting in limited production of food…which is an alarming situation in itself. In between us there are people who can’t afford to have a good quality food, and sometimes no food. Walking on streets we can see many people struggling for a single grain and in hotels, parties and celebration halls we can find trays and trays full of food is wasted… these are two, very diverse situations…we all are leading our lives in such position that, we can think and rethink about the things, our small steps can bring big differences in society.

This project which I named “Vomit”,will be my small effort for the people to bring in consideration the very important things which they miss out, and their small efforts can bring big differences…

Since my father is farmer, we have been always very sensitive about the food, I remember once some bags of wheat were brought from our farm to home, out of which some 2-3 wheat grains fell down… seeing that my father, he bend down to pick those… I laughed at him saying, those are just 2-3 grains, leave it, you have bags together. He looked into my eyes and softly but with much intense voice told me, it looks like just 2-3 grains… but ask to a farmer how much efforts and time it takes to grow these few 2-3 grains…

But in hotels, or marriage parties, what we see… lots and lots… heaps together, of food are wasted. In marriages parties, it’s a fashion now-a-days, to keep n-verities of food, Salad just for decoration purpose not eating… as a result of which, we can see plates full of food dropped in the wash trays. Seeing which I again remember my Grandmother’s talks, when I use to waste food while eating, she use to tell me, “ask laxman bhayya (the person who use to work at our farm), he cannot even afford to buy the spices we put in food. A single spice has to go under so many processes, lots of man power and machine power is involved in it, and more than that our economy, it has to be protected by all seasons, by all foreign elements and then brought till our mouths, and you waste it…!”

At the end of the parties, after hotel closes, what happens? You can see tins together of food, stuffed all together and thrown in gutters. It’s not only one hotel or a single marriage party; it’s thousands of them…who will calculate the amount of food wasted? And to its contradictory if we see…now also there are so many people between us who sleeps empty stomach.

Being from farmer family, I know very well, that such a time also arrives, when the farmer (who provide us with food) and his children, his family has to sleep half stomach or sometimes empty stomach. I always use to think why this big difference amongst the human beings…at one place you have power, you take it as your right to waste the food, and at another place you don’t even have right to even think about a single chapatti…These things are so embedded in my mind and emotions that when I go out to eat and when I see someone, in our definition “poor person”, gazing me with empty eyes, I feel…I lost my right on food. It may sound hyperbole but is truth…

I see this wastage of food as a “vomit”, a vomit of poor against the Annakuta(feast of hundred varieties of food, usually for God) of power, the vomit of their unavailability, their helplessness, their emotions, their empty stomach… Initially, I use to work in wax, when I discovered I can make the real looking food in it, I did a project in my home town, “Nagpur”, I went to hotels, to tell them, that to replace, their displays with wax fake food instead of real ones, which really lead the path and controlled the large amount of daily wastage of food. This effort was just the few drops in an ocean, but as we say drops together makes the ocean…