How'd That Get on My Plate?

I’ve often marveled at the ability of Indians in this area to reuse anything and everything. They’ll reuse tea dregs, save plastic bread bags, and conserve aluminum foil by using it more than twice. In fact, their conservation efforts cross international borders. When you go to the market to purchase something, the grocer or shopkeeper will put your items in a paper bag for easy carrying. This paper bag is always recycled. Sometimes it’s newspaper, sometimes it’s just a plain paper bag, but often times it will be in a bag from another country. The most common ones that I’ve seen are Bud Light Canadian McDonald’s bags. But one bag that made it’s way to our kitchen yesterday really blew my mind.

John, Lakin, Emma and I were playing cards in the evening after dinner when Rajinder came by to drop off some groceries. I waved him in and just told him to drop them off on the counter for me to deal with later, so I didn’t see the packages at first. Rajinder left, and after the game I went into the kitchen to sort out the groceries. One of the purchases was a kilo of yellow split lentils, or moong dal. It was in a sealed, unused plastic bag of Meijer brand pretzels from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

How the hell did that happen? I think the strangest part of this international exchange was that it was a sealed package. As far as I can tell, Meijer had a lot of leftover, unused bags that they had to get rid of. Somehow they made their way to India and Palampur, were used to store fixed amounts of dals, and made it to our house just in time for seven Michigan students to marvel at their presence.

It’s like Palampur was expecting us to come, and sent us a “Welcome to India” message. Cool!