Hygiene Re-Vitalized

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.