Going Organic: Natural Instinct

From jute towels to garbage bags, lipsticks to condoms, everything is going organic. Is it all that good?

- Sonali Achargee

When Aakar Singh returned home to Bandra, Mumbai, from a week-long work trip to the US, he was surprised to find his 38-year-old wife wearing makeup for the first time in ten years. “It’s all organic,” Bani Singh proudly informed her lawyer husband. “I should’ve taken it as a warning. Since then everything in the house has been replaced by an organic alternative,” jokes Aakar, who now sleeps on organic bedsheets, eats organic GMO-free breakfast cereal, drinks organic wine, showers with handmade organic soap and organic jute towels, writes with biodegradable environment-friendly pens and makes love using vegan and organic flavoured condoms.

For Bani, the change in lifestyle occurred after she read about bone char being used to process sugar, and brewers using fish bladders to filter out yeast in beer. “I am a vegetarian. It shocked me to realise how little I know about the making of everyday products. Basic things such as salt, sugar, oil or ghee, which we always have in our kitchens—how much do we know about where they come from, who is bottling it, where it is being bottled and what is going into the bottle? For this reason, I am now a complete organic convert.” And why not, she reiterates. “I am amazed that people don’t think twice about what they are putting on and into their own bodies. Not just fruits and vegetables, but there are so many nasty chemicals, sugar and fake flavours added into cosmetics, feminine hygiene products and clothes. How can you not care about what goes into your skin and body? Being organic is about bringing a complete change to your way of thinking.”

There are several others like her in India who are ready to switch over to an organic way of life. According to a 2015 study,