Taking charge and making a difference
Anyone who visits Rishikesh will remember it for its scenic beauty, the magnificent Ganges, natural healing ashrams, opportunities for camping, rafting, and other outdoor sports, and some also for the yogis and the stunning Ganga Aarti. It is a package of serenity, freshness, youthfulness, and piousness.
On a trip last summer, I got the opportunity to interact with a person who seemed more sensible than many. I’m not talking about a yogi or a saint but a local street vendor woman, selling fish food along the Ganges.
I, along with my mother and sister, was standing in a queue to ride a boat, instead of crossing the Ram Jhoola by foot; to cross the river and go to the other side of the river. There were 20 people in queue. All of them were busy chatting till a woman’s shrill voice rose over the cacophany. She was shouting out at two women standing in the queue, attired in a lehenga-choli with their heads covered with a dupatta. I moved closer to the commotion.
The vendor was shouting in Hindi, “Pick up the paper bag madam ji; this is not a place to litter. This is the banks of the Ganga, there is a dustbin behind the stalls, please throw it over there.” The woman, however, was ignoring the vendor and taking selfies with her companion.
Soon, other vendors joined her. “You’ve bought the food and thrown the bag over there. Fish are not going to eat from the banks. You look like a welleducated woman, don’t you know better?” The second vendor added, “Padh likh ke kabaari hi to banne aate hain yeh log yahaan (Despite being literate, these people come here to litter).”
The remark stayed with me. I realised that this is the dirty truth. We are unable to keep even our holy river clean. What can the world expect from us? We set up a cleanliness campaign and then forget about it after a week. Our civic sense goes right out of our brains as we leave home or travel. We are too busy to look out for a dustbin. Why? Well, the whole place is like a dumping ground and more importantly, it is the duty of municipal workers to clean up. Why should we bother?
We blame the municipal workers for the dirty Indian roads, piles of garbage and polluted beaches. We are, obviously, not at fault.
Occasionally, we do find a beautiful and clean location and then, we term it as: “Places in India that look like foreign destinations” only because they are clean and maintained. We don’t expect that in India. We are habitual of looking at rivers dumped with garbage, roads filled with potholes, seashores transformed into dumping grounds by tourists, walls covered with paan stains, and the fetid stench of urine in public places.
We fear change because we have to be a part of the change. We are so comfortable playing the blame game that we don’t want to come up and do things differently. We don’t want to take the initiative and contribute our bit. Is it really difficult to pick up a paper bag and throw it in a dustbin? Is it tiresome to keep a plastic bag handy, acting as a trash basket, and then throwing it in the dustbin whenever we locate one?
Maybe it is the time to clean our India and maintain our dignity rather than taking selfies with a polluted Ganga in the backdrop. Our smartness lies in our brains and actions, not in our pictures.
WE ARE SO COMFORTABLE PLAYING THE BLAME GAME THAT WE DON’T WANT TO DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY. IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO DO OUR BIT?