'Never borrow intellect, never borrow form, addiction can never make you happy.' Beauty products can make your face shine for a while, but the shine cannot be sustained, so the nature has given it the form. Today we are so behind fashion and addiction that most of the earnings are absorbed in it. Beauty parlors are now opening in villages too. Real food can make the skin glow like a beauty parlor can't. Cosmetics and addictions are always deceptive and greedy, in whose trap all fall. The prevalence of addiction is increasing day by day. According to an estimate, the highest number of betel nuts is consumed in Bhavnagar district. If there are five members in the family, only three of them eat mao. I am citing statistics from families I know. Three people eat an average of 15 fruits by evening. According to the price of one mawa 10 rupees, 150 rupees per day means 4500/month only and only mawa are eaten. It does not include government giving subsidy, bank loan, weekend leave, help from relatives or inflation. If you buy ghee worth so much rupees, the whole family can eat three kilos of pure ghee a month! Pan-Mava Galla people progress and eaters degrade themselves and their family. Many years ago at Nalia in Kutch once sat in the shop of Mamadsheth. He is a big businessman so he told me how much beedi would be drunk in Kutch! I kept saying that in the whole of Kutch there must be one or two lakh people drinking every day. Then he called the distributor of Kutch and got the figure, he said that every day 3 to 3.5 lakh rupees worth of bidi comes to Kutch. More than one crore beedis are sold and consumed every month! My Nath knows how much it will be after the branded beedi is tied and drunk with leaves! This is just beedi, followed by palm-rolled tobacco, leaves, gutkha, vimal, rajnigandha, sweet betel nut, alcohol… then drink more than what is caught! The figure is half-assed…..the price is constantly increasing, yet no Maina Lal has complained that this price increase is not worth it! Two leaves addiction will never let you become two leaves. Saw a photo of a board plastered in a temple saying 'Do not eat tobacco, pan or gutkha and enter the temple. If a one-and-a-half-year-old child can give up his mother's milk, it is not a big deal for an idiot like you to give up his mother's milk.' I used to walk to the temple of Kuldevi. During a cabin drinking tea, he sold 16 mawas. I asked how many mawas are sold in a whole day and they said 250 to 300 mawas are sold. Say only mawa is sold for 2500 to 3000 from a small cabin. Gujarat is becoming a leader in the number of cancer patients. If only one person in the family gets cancer, there is no solution other than his death or financial ruin of the house. Small or big villages, hinterlands or slums or labor colonies have become major hubs of addiction. The earnings of the laborers who come from outside Gujarat are used for addiction. The origin of drug destruction is not wrong!
Image Credit: (Divya-Bhaskar): Images/graphics belong to (Divya-Bhaskar).
