Woody Difference

The house where I stayed in South London is a beautiful building located in a beautiful locality. I was welcomed with warmth by Caroline, the wonderful human being and owner of the house. My room was at the upper floor and carrying the suitcase through the stairs proved to be quite an exercise! I realised that entire staircase is thickly carpeted – in London a common feature perhaps, coz I saw the same even in my friend Ravi’s house – probably a measure to cope with the extreme cold in the winter.

The stairs creaked below my feet – it was a wooden staircase. But that was the beginning. The amount of wood use I saw in the house was amazing from what I have seen back home. Through the carpet not only stairs but also the floors were creaking. Yeah the floors were wooden in that three floor house. There were wooden doors, wooden chairs in the rooms and corridor, wooden tables, wooden cupboards, wooden racks, wooden almirah, wooden show cases, wooden photo frames and many other things placed at the sides of the walls in different rooms. Tapping on the walls of the inner walls of the room revealed that, those were also of wood.

Even the toilets had wood use besides the door, window and cupboard – the WC seat and cover is of wood!!!

Sitting on the seat my mind was roaming in the tribal villages in Orissa and Chhattisgarh (India) – women walking with head loads of fuel wood for kilometres together from jungle to village and many a times paying bribe to the forest guard for the same! Can Carolines of this country even think about that extortion a tribal woman faces for ‘that amount’ of wood use? What will be the reaction of the women in Bondo Hills in Malkangiri (Bondos are one of the primitive tribe in India), if they see that people use wood even for the comfort of shitting????

Two different world altogether.....