They say hygiene should be the
top-most priority in today’s world. To live a healthy life we should learn to
be hygienic as well as ensure that our surrounding is hygienic. As we know in
today’s world the rich is always a germ phobic and to say about the poor, well
if they get two square meal a day, that’s enough for them. They have no qualms
for hygiene. That carelessness shown is also reflected in their health. As you
might have seen the poor kids look malnutrition. Only thing that we need to realize is eating food in unhygienic conditions causes a lot of diseases.
We all love eating out, be it a 5 star restaurant or a road side dhabas offering various delicacies of Indian
cuisine. But do we ever realize what effect it has on our health. How many of
us have ever given a second’s thought to the hygienic condition of the places
where we eat. For an example, many of us love pani-puri. The stalls are
regularly visited by youngsters as well as adults. Have you ever realized what
is the condition of the shopkeeper’s hand. He keeps on wiping his hand in the
same cloth after preparing the masalas. It’s unhygienic as well as disgusting
but none of us pay heed to it. Don’t you guys think we should do something that
would ensure our healthful living?
Well coming to the task at hand,
we realized that even we are not conscious about our health. You must be wondering
what the task has to do with our realization. First of all being a college
students and hostelites, fast food is
our only recluse. The hostel food is never up to the mark and thus the students
resort to fast foods and the ‘thela walas’. And you definitely would have seen
the condition in which they serve us food, but even knowing all these we could
not give up our need for the fast food because it has become an integral part
of our being. Now every problem has a
solution and this problem too has a solution. The solution came as the task by ‘Reform’n’ation’. The task asked us to
distribute plastic gloves to the food stalls in our locality and educate them
about basic health and hygiene. So we started working on the task.
First of all we went in search of
the shop where we could get those plastic hand gloves. We went to the market
area of our city and searched for it in all related stores. Many shop-keepers
didn’t even understand what we required. But after a lot of searching and
querying we found a shop which offered us what we wanted, we needed at least 20
packets. So, he told us that he would need to search for it and it would take
time, so we waited.
After searching for some time he
got the packets and we bought 25 packets. Then the next step was to distribute
them in food stalls. So first we had to decide where all we could give those
gloves. We came to a conclusion that it would be more beneficial if we give
those to roadside vendors such as ‘pani-puri walas’, fast food stalls and the
snacks shops. This was decided because those were the places where the students
frequently visit the most. Also we decided to start from the shops in the
nearby areas. Thus we went to the nearest locality and started off with the
snacks stalls.
The first shops we went were hesitant and they
thought it to be a prank. So they didn’t give us any heed. We tried to tell
them the benefits of using the plastic gloves. The ‘pani-puri-wala-bhaiya’ came to our rescue as he was the first one
to respond with a positive attitude. He heard our views patiently and then
simply told us “Kitna loge ek packet ka?”
To this we replied him back with a childish smile on our faces that “Bhaina it’s free.” In this way we distributed some gloves in the nearby shops. This gave us some confidence that maybe we could convince many shopkeepers to adopt this method and use the plastic hand gloves while preparing food as well as while serving them to their customers.
We went to each and every shop where they tend to
use their hands for preparing or serving foods. Along with that we also told
them about the diseases that are caused due to the unhygienic conditions in
which they prepare and serve food. In this way we distributed 25 packets of
gloves to roadside vendors, sweet shops and dhabas. Thus our task was completed
and we inched another step closer to serve the society in a better way.
It can be described as a small step towards building
a healthy and hygienic society. As we took a step if all others do the same
then this nation would be a much healthier place to live in. So this would be
sole request to the vendors whom we distributed the hand gloves to use it as
well as to encourage their fellow vendors to also use gloves so that they
maintain a hygienic surrounding for their food.
