Long before sustainability acquired glossy reports, ambitious targets and impressive acronyms, grandmothers had already solved half the problems. They simply did not know they were supposed to call it sustainability. Nor did they seem particularly interested in announcing it. Grandmothers belonged to an era when common sense quietly performed duties that today require conferences, consultants and colourful presentations. Nothing, for instance, was ever truly wasted.

Glass jars did not retire after a single assignment. They graduated into distinguished careers storing spices, pickles and mysterious ingredients that nobody else was allowed to touch. Old saris acquired second lives as curtains, cushion covers or quilts stitched with stories. Worn-out shirts became dusters, and vegetable peels somehow transforme d themselves into something useful long before composting became fashionable. Grandmothers possessed an extraordinary talent. They could look at something headed for the bin and see possibility. The rest of us merely saw rubbish.

In hindsight, perhaps waste was never really a material problem. It was an imagination problem and grandmothers had imagination in abundance. More remarkably, they practised circularity without attending workshops. Plastic bags were folded with reverence and reused until they practically deserved retirement benefits. Rubber bands enjoyed extended careers. Gift boxes lived several reincarnations. Buttons occupied sacred spaces in metal tins, waiting patiently for emergencies that, mysteriously, always arrived.

No one questioned why fifty-year-old buttons were being preserved. Grandmothers understood something modern life occasionally forgets. Value does not disappear simply because usefulness changes. Perhaps they were the world’s first systems thinkers. They saw connections everywhere. Nothing existed in isolation. Food was linked to health. Health was linked to routine. Routine was linked to discipline. Discipline was linked to peace. Peace, according to them, was impossible if one skipped meals or refused to wear warm clothes in winter. Science, incidentally, appears to be catching up.........

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