Green Karma To My Rescue

Here is an incident from a recent trip which reaffirmed my belief in karma, in this instance, green karma. 

We had planned a trip to Singapore in June 2013. Just a day before our trip, my friend informed me about a haze encapsulating the country. Haze is a recurring phenomenon in South East Asia. In Indonesia, fires are used to clear land on plantations and can burn for weeks because of peat deposits below the surface. This smoke gets blown to neighboring countries and chokes the air. Google showed the pollution levels to be at an all-time high in Singapore, in fact, the highest in 15 years. "Oh perfect! Why me, Bhagwanji? What have I done to deserve this?", thought I. I have always been a green soul. I am a champion for carrying own bags for shopping, using packaged food sparingly, turning off lights and taps, conserving RO water, avoiding disposable products, disposing waste responsibly, spreading green message wherever people are bothered to listen .....and I still get punished for someone else's green sins? Not fair! I felt a little cheated. But that's how life is. To top it all, my husband and 2 .5-year-old daughter had a fever and were on antibiotics. So it was turning out to be a double whammy.

We boarded our flight with masks in our bags and a prayer on our lips. The flight landed at Changi airport at 8 am. When I looked up, a weak sun was trying to welcome us but it failed to cheer me up. Singapore in a haze and we in a daze.......things didn't look very promising. Interestingly, I didn't feel any discomfort in breathing. Maybe, we are used to high levels of pollution, we joked. 

We reached Singapore on 20th June 2013 and PSI (not to be confused with Psy of Gangnam style - PSI stands for Pollutant Standards Index) reached 401 at 11am the next day. Tourist attractions started putting up cautionary notices - shows would be canceled if PSI crossed 300 marks, they said. It sent our sightseeing schedule into a tizzy. Singapore zoo and Jurong bird park are famous for their shows and I didn't want to miss those shows. So we spent the first-day visiting the Japanese garden and IKEA. The next day, we planned a hike to Mc Ritchie's Park. The logic was that the green cover would protect us from haze-pollutants and spending a day here would buy us time so we could see the zoo and bird park on clearer days. 

Luckily, on the third day, the PSI levels came down. We hurried to the bird park lest the situation change in the next few hours. All the shows took place. We had survived another touristic day! In the coming days, we always consulted the PSI status before planning an excursion. It got better and we never had to miss a show or an attraction because of the haze. Lady luck was on our side and I like to believe, it was because of my green karma. It isn't that I would have stopped being green had the haze hazed our plans but it always helps if something good happens to oneself. 

So when I thanked God for a  successful trip, I secretly took a little credit for it because after all what goes around, comes around!