Collegians sway to Mangta Hai girl’s anti-plastic beat

Heads turned and designer glasses were taken off as nearly a thousand eyes squinted for a better look at the bubbly `Mangta Hai’ Veejay who clambered on a canteen bench, her podium for half-an-hour.

Well, Meghna wasn’t here for a shoot. The veejay, who feels strongly about the environment, had entered the so-called no man’s land between the colleges to spread the twin messages of the dangers of plastic bags and the dreaded Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) virus.

“Did you know that this plastic bag is non-bio-degradable and can lie around on the earth for a thousand years?” she intoned, displaying a specimen that had been picked off the road. Voices murmured in approval in thecanteen, which would make the interiors of a submarine look like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.

“Use rubber not plastic,” she ad-libbed in a lighter vein, between signing a zillion autographs and passionately explaining the harmful effects of both to wide-eyed students at individual tables.

Anila and Tanvi Shrivastav, twins studying in the first year junior college have already kicked the habit, thanks to their mother. “Housewives in Lokhandwala complex where we stay have reverted to cloth bags,” one of them says.

“Plastic bags choke the soil and affect plant growth,” says Mithibai student Latif Shaikh. That he is a botany student has something to do with it.

Later, speaking to students in the quieter confines of an NM classroom during the lunch break, Meghna drove home the spiel simply and forcefully, saying limiting the use of plastic would have to come from every individual.

She also handed out some useful tips. “Do your little bit. When you go shopping, carry an unbleached clothbag, a cane bag or your bagpack, but refuse that plastic bag.” Return all the elaborate Matrushka-doll-like packaging that comes with simple purchases like a pair of shoes, she advised.

Back home she has a running feud with her mother on the use of plastic bags. “I keep refusing the bags, but my mother keeps stocking plastic bags to store food in the freezer.”