● Switch to green tea from lal cha. If lal cha (tea without milk), which is also popular as “liquor cha” or “black tea” in Bengali homes, is good for health, green tea is better. Green tea, which contains polyphenols, particularly catechins, as well as carotenoids, tocopherols, vitamin C, and also chromium, manganese, selenium or zinc, and phytochemical compounds, yes, so many of them and so benignly complex, is purported to reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, dental cavities, kidney stones and cancer, and improve bone density and cognitive function. All of which are required much for Bengal’s health. Lal cha is rich in antioxidants too, but we have been drinking it for decades. Let’s give a chance to something else.

● But will the ubiquitous red plastic chairs at public functions be replaced with green ones? That will be a major shift in state infrastructure.

● Let there be foliage. Red meat must be dropped, in favour of greens. Let’s face it. Only Dennis the Menace can get away with saying he will wear green on St Patrick’s Day, not eat it. But not everyone is Dennis the Menace. Many people are much older, and living in Bengal, where too much of mangsher jhol is consumed daily.

Research repeatedly says meat induces the risk of oesophageal, lung, pancreatic and endometrial cancer, as well as breast cancer, stomach cancer, lymphoma, bladder cancer and prostate cancer, not to mention cardiovascular diseases. Remember, when you are looking at that piece of meat you are looking at mortality. Be scared. Chlorophyll, on the other hand, doesn’t kill. Nor does it involve bloodshed. Bengal certainly needs less violence, more tolerance. Tolerate cabbages, cauliflowers, radishes, carrots, tomatoes and such things in your diet, though strictly speaking, carrots are orange, tomatoes red and greens a metaphor.

While on the subject, replace red chillies with green ones. Red chilli powder can be adulterated with carcinogenic dyes.

● Save trees. Do not publish the English novel you have written if you know it is no good. Ok, publish it online, if you must.

● Live in green houses. You may colour a wall red, but go for the “green” solar energy, which strictly speaking again, is colourless, but environment-friendly in its renewability. Of course, you won’t go for it now, for solar energy at your house might not support an AC, and who can think of surviving a Calcutta summer without an AC these days? The truly intrepid. In Calcutta only around a thousand families are using solar energy now while the number is around 2 lakh in Bengal.

But 10 years from now, says S.P. Gon Chowdhury, advisor to the government of West Bengal on renewable energy, this won’t be the case. In 10 years, the rising electricity bills will force everyone to shift to solar energy in the state, says Gon Chowdhury.

Look at the advantages. Installing solar energy in one’s home is not difficult at all. It takes two to three days only. “A small family will not need more than .5 kilowatt of solar power an hour while a big family may need around 1 kilowatt of it an hour,” says Gon Chowdhury.

The charges for the one-time installation of apparatus supplying .5 kilowatt solar power is Rs 80,000 . The 1 kilowatt apparatus will cost Rs 1.5 lakh. Almost everything from solar heaters, fans, lights and computers can run on solar energy. Nabard provides a loan up to 50 per cent of the amount required if the apparatus is bought from a Nabard-approved solar energy manufacturer. There are five such manufacturers in Calcutta. Hopefully they will have good business soon.

● Sell off the second car, save petrol, which costs Rs 68 per litre. Soon the whole of Calcutta should be able to take the Metro to work anyway.

● Let there be an active green bench in Calcutta High Court. On the basis of a petition by environment activist Subhas Datta, the Supreme Court had ordered the state to set up a green bench on April 16, 1996. The bench began to function from June 17 of that year. But environmentalists claim the bench, which the chief justice presides over, has been inactive most of the times since 2003-04.

“The case hearings are very irregular and it often takes years for the bench to decide on an important environmental issue,” says Datta.

● Grow green fingers. Garden. Gardening and work are said to be the two best things for a soul to heal. Bengal needs both.

● Let there be more green corridors, stretches of roads where traffic lights are synchronised in such a way that a motorist gets successive green signals without having to wait. The CR Avenue stretch between Esplanade and Bagbazar had been made a green corridor about a decade back but the project was abortive.

Green corridors in the other sense, such as the still-beautiful Southern Avenue, trees on both sides of the road, are also welcome.

● Let Red Road remain Red Road, let the Writers’ Buildings and the Calcutta Municipal Corporation retain their red bricks, but let there be no red tape.

● Last but not the least, as the joke goes, shobuj paan khaan aar laal pik phelun (Eat green paan and spit out the red juice). But not everywhere.