One very unusual thing happened to me this morning...
I was on this early groggy morning's, most hated kinda trips back from home to Mumbai… Cursing myself on having booked the bluesstt Monday morning's 6'o'clocks Sinhagad Express.. i hated every moment of being awake!!! Sinhagad is the most crowded & the most irritating & the yet, considerably fast leaving me with no other options to get to Mumbai faster. Also, i hate buses.. So here i am stuck with this godforsaken multiple wheeler!! Now, this reason why i hate this train is that this is one thing that does not allow me to sleep. Its the most uncomfortable second sitting & the crowd, the atmosphere, the proximity of people sitting around you all add up to the frustration from lack of sleep leaving with spoilt & slow paced week.. SO what to do??
Since the sleep goddess had refused to shower me with her blessings i thot I’d rather divert my attention elsewhere... M hungry i felt, & a plate of idli wouldn’t hurt the nonexistent, never ending battle for FAT. And so i bought a plate of idli… The hawker as expected gave it to me a disposable paper plate. I promptly gobbled it up & folded the remains of the chutney by the circumference of the round paper plate & followed the man who'd gotten up just before me to dispose of the plate. By the time i reached where he'd disposed it off... I groped for a dustbin. "Could you please tell me where did you dispose off the plate" i asked him in Marathi.. He just mocked at me & shot back, 'Have you been abroad all your life?. Just throw it outside.' It’s just the nature, the sparrows, the insects will eat it off.!!! & walked off...
I was shocked!!!! Do i need to be an outsider in my own country to understand that littering is not a good habit? i mean, what the hell are we made up of? It’s probably some wierd neurological disorder which makes us drop items outta the car or on the roadside. What are we? Just a lazy mass of garbage who cares less to walk that extra mile & reach a dustbin?
And yes, do we have enough dustbins? Will somebody cater to this issue, at all ever? When Mamta Banerjee disclosed her railway budget, did anybody care enough to question her why she hasn’t included any plans to make the trains a better & a cleaner mode of transport to travel? Why did the road minister not propose to include more dustbins by the street side? Why do we spit? Why does that small wrapper of chocolate find its way to the roadside, surreptitiously?
U'd say, i don’t do it, alone... But do you discourage people who litter? Delhi went on its cleanliness drive only when it had Olympic Games, our city gets cleaned occasionally only when there is some minister visiting our premises.
Do you want me to teach you the ill effects of littering? Aren’t we facing the consequences already????
Its a sad sad state of affairs!! M shocked with the fact that we need an external force to teach us that we need to keep our city clean. Most of the Indian who have travelled abroad praise the cities for their cleanliness & the next moment you’ll see them throwing the banana wrapper on the roadside. What are you, a mad hypocrite? Don’t you want to see your city clean too? Its we who need to start. At our level...
I mean seriously, we need to make a very honest attempt to keep our city clean. In one of the ads you see a small boy preventing the citizens from spoiling the monuments of the country by scribbling on it & in another one you see Amir Khan standing for two foreigner women against a host of eve teasers.
The message is clear… We need to save our country from getting dirty. M sure other countries do not need super stars making an appeal to the general public from littering. But our country does. We need to become Amir Khan time & again & stop people from littering. Be it a small wrapper or some big shit. Its should only find its way inside the dustbin. Women should use a corner of their purse as dumping ground & put in all the shit. As soon as you reach home empty the bag & there you are, good to go again. If you think you cant help but litter with a certain thing, just don’t do it.
I usually keep the side pockets of my purse as a dumping ground. None of friends dare to litter in front of me owing to the fact that i hate it. In fact they promptly come & give the crap to me or dump it in my purse themselves. A lot of my other friends i know are stopping their friends from doing it. One of my friends even stop strangers from doing it. He occasionally gets into an argument & ends up losing it, but atleast he is satisfied about the fact that he did his bit.
I urge all you Indians to take an oath against littering. Stop all the bhaiyas from spitting, stop all the aunties from throwing, stop all your friends from making the surrounding dirty. Just Go Green!!!
I am doing my bit, are you??
Cheers,
Sne!!
