Extolling ecology

Goethe-Zentrum Hyderabad recently conducted a four-hour ‘Ecomela Bazaar’ over the weekend at its premises in Banjara Hills. The programme consisted of a street play ‘Bas Ek Boondh’; a talk session on ‘Ecology and Milk’ by T Vijayendra; Kiddo Gardener, a session for adult and children’s creating green urban spaces and a discussion by Saraswati Kavula about her two short films, ‘Many Faces of Madness’ and ‘Vision 2020’.

The street play ‘Bas Ek Boondh’ was staged by students of Gitanjali Devshala. More than 70 children participated in this play. In the play, the students highlighted the issues of water faced by society in summer. They shared tips to conserve water. The other highlight of the programme was a debate by T Vijayendra, a B Tech graduate from IIT, Kharagpur. He shared that he lives on an organic farm in the foothills of the Western Ghats.

The topic for debate was ‘Milk’, which is considered as one of the five white poisons by some, while an elixir of life by others. Sharing about the ecological and historical basis for the opposing views and how plentiful cheap resources in the last 100 years have fogged the argument he said, “There are five things exist in our diet that should be called poison because they have little nutrition value and can be harmful to our health.

Refined salt is worst food for us, another is white sugar. It is bad for people to consume as it is a chemical substance extracted from sugar cane and in the process it removes all fibre-forming proteins. The third is the pasteurised cow milk as it destroys beneficial bacteria and all its phosphates, which is essential for calcium absorption and calcium works with Vitamin D. Heating any raw food destroys enzymes active.”