Indian parents will always have a desi solution to all their problems. Children not studying, bribe them. Kid not eating, run after him with food.
They are also some of the most considerate people and don’t shy away from doing the right thing even if it means doing it alone.
Recently, a digital content creator, Nayana Premnath shared a video wherein one could see her father packing the leftover food from a fancy restaurant into his steel dabba without hesitation.
Nayana, who is a ‘Zero Waste Vegan’ and an ‘Eco YouTuber’ goes on to write that we should normalize this behavior in spite of being ashamed of it.
Even though she is a ‘Sustainability Influencer’, she didn’t have to ask her father to pack the leftover food. He did it by choice.
She is obviously proud of her father.
In the caption, she further elaborated that it took her parents years to inculcate this change. However, now, it’s her mom who reminds her to take a dabba whenever they go to a restaurant.
“My sister carries her own stash of steel straws to use at the cafés. My dad shocked me by taking the dabba from me and putting in the leftovers by himself. This made me the most happy. By doing this, he prevented us from taking home a plastic packet of food. Also, this happened at a very fancy restaurant.
My husband always says no to the disposable water bottles kept at the restaurant tables and asks for normal water for all of us. If I had maintained embarrassment and held back from doing all of these in the first place, I’m almost sure that none of these habits would have become developed by my close ones, over the years.”
Urging people to not shy away from taking such a sustainable step, she added:
“Whether they criticise you right now, they will definitely notice the change and eventually realise that it isn’t a big deal and start doing it themselves. Yea, the changes may be slow. But you keeping doing what you do. And don’t keep any expectations either. Let them find their pace for the transformation.”
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TBH, some of us are too shy to even ask the waiter to pack the leftover food for us. Watching our parents pack it in a dabba would make us embarrassed. But come to think of it, it’s the most sustainable way of protecting the environment while saving food.
Also, it’s not just about taking home the leftover food because we paid for it. It’s also about not taking it in environment-killing plastic or paper boxes that usually restaurants pack our food in. Using a steel dabba for it is just genius.
And people online loved this idea.
We are sure masters of reusing our dabbas. And this is something we should definitely follow in our everyday lives to save the planet from being such a mess.