Hey there! How are you? I am plastic. Not plastic like your college friends; I’m the real deal. My breed is straw, and my colour is white, but out here in the plastic world, we don’t judge each other in terms of colour or breed. Who does anyway?
I was last used at PAM, this eating joint at Hindu College. PAM stands for Pizzas and More, but the funny thing is there are no pizzas here. I feel like I should petition to change PAM’s full form to ‘Plastics and More’!
So, I was a fresh new kid ready to be dipped in a nice cup of not-so-nice cold coffee. But then members of this college society told the owner, a grumpy white-haired uncle, that he should stop using plastic straws in his shop. They called me and my plastic family murderers and said that he should play his part in saving the environment by banning us. To this, PAM uncle did what he’s best at: he told the students to bugger off.
I felt offended that those students called me a killer but as I realised later, that’s the sad truth. I could have said this is my autobiography but this is more like a confessional. You see no one is a natural born killer. Killers are made, rather than born. I too was made a killer by my creators, human beings.
You see I look good when you are French kissing the life out of me, sipping on your drink. But then, you dispose me off. And when I am disposed, I wish for a nice, calm death. The purpose of my life has been served. However, it seems that I’m borderline immortal. The problem with being immortal is that you can get extremely…bored.
Now I lay in this pile of garbage to rot but I won’t even rot; the organic things have it easy, I tell you. No one would pick me up and reuse me. And just to add to my concerns, I have unintentionally started destroying and killing things.
This bird was scrounging for some food in the garbage and the dumbo swallowed me down too. The feel inside his body was gross but what felt grosser was when it vomited me out. The poor creature couldn’t ingest me. I told you right, I just can’t die!
The bird kept on choking for some time and to my horror, it just stopped breathing in a few minutes. That was when I became a killer. I imagine how so many members of my family might have become such unintentional murderers. Those ‘woke’ students were right.
I have blown with the wind now to some littered road in Delhi (there are many in the city), waiting for my death. But instead, all I do is just stay in my non-biodegradable state killing Mother Nature slowly (I heard this science kid talk about me like that once; he also said that some of the straws kill marine creatures).
I wish that in the next life, I’m not reborn as a plastic straw. Maybe in the future, humans stop using plastic straws altogether so we’ll never be created and we’ll never be killers. Maybe…
Shaurya Singh Thapa
