We heard the phrase- Ma ke hath ka khana! Are these words of some ad? All that seems so distant and faraway now! How sophistication has come to our lives! We open a can of condensed milk and make a sweet meat or a packet of noodles and boil it for few minutes! Lo and behold! Your dish is ready for consumption.
Ease and comfort has made us used to opening and popping stuff into microwave and relishing it. With the virtual paucity of time and lack of hands we have got accustomed to this method of living.
It must have all started with going to the jungles or vegetable patches to search for the right veggies. Collecting them and sorting out, washing and weeding them, cleaning and chopping, putting in the pot and stirring, simmering and sautéing, salting and tasting as the cooking went along. It must have been an extremely time consuming ordeal. Then the factor called comfort must have crept in which led to getting it readymade. But the spiral must have started in various avatars.
Then there must have been people who took advantage of this factor called lack of time to create a business model. There being no dearth of people wanting ease and comfort, would have led to this entrepreneurs making a killing. Understanding the pain points of the end users is the name of the game and addressing them positively towards their personal goal of getting rich led to these innovations in businesses.
Today even large organizations apply the same methodologies towards better management of goals and business objectives. Take the case of large cellphone companies. They make their phone in one country, ship it to another, procure components at another location, sell it at yet another and so on. There is no dearth of innovative approaches towards solving the consumers pain points. Third party manufacturing and international marketing makes up for these innovative enterprises.
There was a time when companies like Nestle took to dishing out noodles which could be cooked in two minutes, helping the ever stressed mother in her duties. She could make instantly nourishing dish in a much lesser time which everyone loves. Then the large corporations too started the same in their factories. Take the case of milk production. You are told it is fresh milk but is it? Fresh French fries, are not even fresh. These are half cooked and stored in cold places. Fresh cuts are not even fresh. Freshly cut veggies are cut in the morning. The sandwich chain talks of fresh ingredients but check out their buns to veggies or meat used. Can you see it stored in front of you and cut well in advance. Fresh means cut right in front of your eyes. Yet, all that is called convenience and good food.
You can get packed crunchy salads or curry puffs, packed burgers or sandwiches, puddings and health drinks or anything that you desire is readily available aplenty. The other best but costlier option is to go out to eat at a restaurant or order online or call. 30 minutes or free are slogans used to drive home the point of freshness.
One more nail in the coffin comes from the refrigerators and cold storages. You can stuff your fridge for days and keep on eating from it. So freshness is compromised but wait! You have the microwaves to heat and eat. So comes in the piping hot stuff again. All of the above speaks of convenience in bold letters.
Ready to eat food, restaurants, half cooked foods, order on-lines, heat and eat, open and eat, fast foods, microwaves and ovens, cooks and maids, laziness, tardiness, inertia and paucity of time, offers and freebies, gifts and parties, discount vouchers and campaigns, marketing and friendly persuasion are some of the reasons why humans have become more tamasic in nature.
Tamas is the third guna or tendency of humans. This age is called the age of tamas and everyone is bound to succumb to it. Tamas increases laziness and inertia, slowness and laid back attitude, drinking intoxicants and eating stale foods helps too, which causes all these symptoms. Lethargy sets in and people seek the easiest way out. Automation helps and so does the universe. Tamas cannot be overcome very easily. Anyway, the yuga will perforce make one become tamasic in nature. So if you look at the rate at which everyone is hurtled down the slope of tamas, we will surely be lost in it soon.
Surely, all of us can see it happening and yet we will not be able to stop the downfall. The ease and comfort are too enticing and alluring. The more the innovations in automations like the iot and the rest, the easier it is for relaxing. Robots and automatically driven cars, space travels, Internet and super fast systems will hasten the progress towards more comforts. Long live tamas and Kaliyuga.
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