How Much Grains We Are Wasting Today!

♠ Posted by Abhijit Bangal in Food,Marriage seasons at 7:19 AM

The marriage season is currently on in full swing in India, or at least in our part of the country. There are at least three to four marriages on a particular day in a single locality and it becomes impossible to attend all of them. Rice grains are considered auspicious according for the Hindus and are an integral part of almost all the auspicious ceremonies.

A marriage cannot be complete without rice grains. Every wedding ritual invariably has rice grains. The actual wedding, when the priest chants the hymn – the mangalashtaka – people throw rice grains – akshata – on the bride and the bridegroom.

All things apart. Somewhere I had read that at least 4 lakh marriages take place each season. Now, I don’t know the source of the numbers or in how many locations the marriages take place. But, at least, on an average 4KG of such rice is used in each marriage.

Now let’s calculate this. 4 lakh marriages and 4KG rice grains amounts to 16 lakh KG of rice. That’s certainly huge – more than 1.5 million of rice. And what happens after the ceremony? Not even a grain is worth consuming. And all the grains are trodden over.

In India, we consider food on the same platform as that of God. So, we always respect food and any kind of food stuff. Coming to the point, I met my friend after so many days unexpectedly. When I asked him if he had taken the akshata, he answered in the negative.

When I asked him the reason, he said that he doesn’t feel it good to use rice grains in this way. It is a waste of food he said and added that he never likes wasting food this way when many people don’t even get stomachful to eat. I was really amazed by his thinking considering the fact that he was just a college going boy. Really hats off to such thinking!