A rose or a ladder?
An argument over a Valentine's Day gift leads shubhranshu choudhary to the politics of an aluminium ladder
On the eve of Valentine's Day, a friend of my son persuades me to take my wife "out for dinner and buy her a nice gift'. I thank her for the idea but do not ask her to hazard a guess on my choice. She is understandably horrified to hear that I had purchased an aluminium ladder to complement my wife's new bookshelf, and admonishes me, "You could have bought her a rose.'
I argue that an aluminium ladder is a more ethical gift than a corporate rose. I invite her to take a look at the politics of corporate roses, grown on leased farms in Asia and Africa. Within a few years, the land is ruined by excessive pesticide and fertilizer use