Many of you have heard about Mahatma Gandhi.  As a child, I had been told many stories by my grandfather. This one was my favorite so I want to share it with you.

One day a woman came to Gandhi to get her little boy to stop eating sugar. The woman said to Gandhi, "My son eats so much sugar. It is doing him harm. I cannot get him to stop. Will you please tell him to quit eating sugar? I know he'll obey you." Gandhi thinks it over for a few moments and says, "Please come back next week."

The mother leave with her son, a bit baffled. But in a week the lady and child return. Gandhi sees them, jokes with the boy, hugs him and says, "Please don't eat sugar, it is not good for you." "Yes, I will do that", the lad nods, with pre-adolescent confidence, as if this had always been the plan. Gandhi is quite pleased, the lad jumps down, and the mother comes over shaking her head in unbelief: "I don't understand, Gandhi. It took a whole week just to tell him that. Why didn't you tell my son this a week ago?" Gandhi smiles and replies, "Last week I, too, was eating sugar."

Whether true or not, I love this story. Gandhi refused to be a hypocrite—not even about a matter so small and commonplace that his double-standard might never be discovered.   He would only advise the boy what he himself was able to pull off.

Sometimes when you are indulged in a little contaminated situation, it is tough to differentiate between right and wrong. How should I justify promoting eco-generation and being a nature lover at one hand but working in an oil and gas piping design company which designs refineries for many international organizations which are facing worldwide social campaigns on large scale against their various projects harmful to world?s ecological systems e.g. drilling in Artic for oil, poor oil spill response, deep sea drilling for oil and gas, unsafe oil tankers? transportation in sensitive sea areas and dumping disused installations in the ocean etc.? 

I carpool for my office to save fossil fuel and to reduce the burden on the environment. But what about air-conditioning, which, I think, 90% of eco-generation Ambassador, including me, use in a day at home, school or in the office. There are many more things related with our double-standard policy.

I understand that we live in a hotter climate so we need AC, cannot rely on cycle and nonrenewable energy resources for long distance travelling, cannot carry bags every time we buy things from market and cannot save enough trees by reducing uses of tissue paper and ATM slips. But how can you give advice to anybody unless you yourself are of that situation? How can we say that we are really able to promote eco-generation?  So there should be a limit. But what limits we should put on for us? I need answers for me, you and everyone.