Problems of plenty

We suffer from problems of plenty. We have the problems, and other people get the plenty. Plenty of money, that is. Take the latest buzzword in circulation: Reverse osmosis, known to its pals as RO. RO is like one of those viral flus that do the rounds; everyone''s het up about it. That''s exactly it you see, said Bunny, who''d caught the RO bug too.The water we drink is full of viruses, which give us flu and who knows what else; we must get an RO system; she said. But we already have a water purifying system, I protested, referring to a bulbous contraption in the kitchen which made tinkly-tonk sounds while producing an arcing stream of water like a musical manikin pis. But apparently our melodic manikin - which relied on an ultraviolet process to deactivate bacteria — wasn''t up to snuff when it came to filtering out viruses, pesticides, chemical contaminants and heavy metals in the water we drank.
Did you know that apart from bacteria and viruses, the water we drink contains insecticides and pesticides which cause cancer, sodium which causes heart disease, calcium which causes kidney stones, magnesium which causes gall bladder stones, lead which leads to mental retardation, fluoride which causes fluorosis, arsenic which causes poisoning and iron which causes constipation and dysentery? said Bunny. Maybe it''s through drinking all that lead, which leads to mental retardation, but how can this two-in-one iron cause both constipation and dysentery? I asked. Dunno, said Bunny. Maybe on Mondays it causes constipation, and on Tuesdays it''s the other thing, and on Wednesdays it''s back to constipation, and so on through the livelong week, she suggested. Maybe, I agreed. We decided to give this potty-untrained iron the go-by - along with all the other boojums lurking in the aqua - and opted for RO.
It came in the form of an over-the-sink attachment that looked like a mini nuclear missile silo in triplicate. Does it make tinkly-tonk noises? I asked. No, it does not, said the RO man. What it does make is the purest water possible, by passing it through a semi-permeable membrane of 0.0001 micron gauge which filters out even the tiniest of microbes or soluble or insoluble pollutants, he explained. WHO allows up to 500 units of TDS (Totally Dissolved Solids) in water; our RO system gives you water as pure as 20 TDS units, he added. I wondered if my TDS-clogged constitution would be able to live up to so much purity.
As I shelled out for my RO system, many thousands of others all over the country were whacking out between Rs 11,000 and Rs 16,000 for theirs. I was struck by a 0.0001 micron of an idea. Who created the problem of dangerous pollutants in the water? We did, by contaminating the environment. Having created the problem, we let technology develop a solution to it. An expensive solution, by which people make a lot of money. The same with the problem of lifestyle diseases, like high BP and coronary ailments. We create them through our living habits, and enrich doctors and specialists whom we go to to find a cure to the problem. We created dictatorships and tyrannies, and to protect ourselves from them we devised Parliament which, in this country, costs the taxpayer Rs 58.26 lakh per day to run. We create heaven and hell, and then buy the expensive insurance policy of religion. Very expensive, if the balance sheet of Tirupati or the Vatican is to be believed.
There''s money to be made out of problems. And I''m the biggest problem I know. Is there money to be made out of me? Bunny considers this judiciously. Then shakes her head. Some problems are beyond solution, she concludes. A bitter pill. But at least I can swallow it sans lead, which would cause even further retardation.