Last night at the gymkhana I pressed the lift button to go down, the lift, however, had other ideas. It went up. I stepped out and immediately wondered whether I had accidentally reached the municipal garbage department.
The room was covered with paper. Not decorated with paper. Covered with paper.
For one terrifying moment I thought I had stumbled into a secret recycling factory. Then I discovered the truth. A housie game had just ended.
The players had vanished. Their slips had not.
The floor looked as if a paper cyclone had swept through the room and then settled down for a nap.
What amazed me was that dustbins stood nearby. Not one. Not two. Several.
They stood there looking lonely and rejected.
I could almost hear one dustbin saying to another, “Do you think we smell?”
The other replying sadly, “No. I think they simply don’t know what we are for.”
And that is often our national problem.
We know how to buy things. We know how to use things. We know how to break things.
But putting things into a dustbin seems to require advanced scientific training.
We throw garbage from car windows. We spit on roads. We toss plastic cups into drains.
Then we complain that the city floods.
Imagine throwing your dinner plate onto your living room floor every night and then wondering why your house resembles a landfill.
Yet many of us do exactly that with our streets.
The sad part is that when somebody protests, the reaction is often not gratitude but anger.
“How dare you tell me not to litter?”
“How dare you ask me to stand in a queue?”
“How dare you suggest I follow a rule?”
Poor Mr Dastur the senior citizen from Thane, who told a cabbie not to spit, and was thrashed. And maybe others like him who dare to object and very often discover that civic sense can be hazardous to their life.
But the outside world my friends is beginning to react.
For years we assumed that our behaviour was our private affair.
Not anymore.
People notice. They notice the noise. They notice the pushing. They notice the littering.
And slowly a stereotype begins to form of what Indians are like. Crass, crude and churlish.
The tragedy of stereotypes is that even those who behave well get painted with the same brush.
A few people throw rubbish and millions inherit the reputation.
Perhaps it is time we realised that civic sense is not a Western idea, an Eastern idea, or a political idea. It is simply respect. Respect for others. Respect for public spaces. Respect for ourselves.
Because no amount of charm, influence, clever explanations, or even a strategically presented box of Melody chocolates can permanently cover up bad manners.
Sooner or later, trash tells the story. And unfortunately, it speaks very loudly while raising quite a stink..!
____________________________
HERE’S MORE THE AUTHOR CAN OFFER YOU…. JUST CLICK HERE..
————————————————
Would love to hear from you in the COMMENTS section below…and IF YOU WANT TO RECEIVE BOB’S BANTER EVERYDAY, PLEASE SEND YOUR NAME AND WHATSAPP PHONE NO TO [email protected]
————————————————–
Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and writes a daily column, which has graced the pages of over 60 newspapers and magazines, from a daily column in the Khaleej Times, Dubai, the Morning Star, London, and in nearly every state in India, from The Statesman in Kolkata, to the Kashmir Times in Kashmir to the Trinity Mirror in Chennai.
Heavy on the spot penalties can stem the rot of housie like incidents.
The flip side is door to door garbage collection is not as good as it should be so convenient areas around congested living areas become garbage dumps
Yet,when we cross our borders, our civic sense comes alive again. Are we just scared of the consequences there? Or do we have that little respect for our country & countrymen? Truly unfortunate!
I couldn’t agree more… we’re loosing sense of belonging in every sphere of life🥲
When authority cracks it’s whip people automatically behave. The issue is two pronged. Most Indians will keep their personal space near and clean, public spaces is another thing. They believe that the ‘sweepers’ are paid to clean so why should I take the additional trouble to throw my trash in the bin that is one foot away. The second is the people in authority don’t ensure compliance in having the public follow basic hygeine like spitting, urinating, littering and yes even defecating on the streets. How many times have you seen mothers pull their toddlers pants down and make them urinate at the side of the road? The authorities should enforce the law instead of only the municipality it should be extended to the traffic cops. Fines should be increased to ten times the present amount and if any one tries to say increase the toilets then tell them that foreign countries don’t have toilets every street corner why don’t they have people urinating or spitting everywhere? Infact I read somewhere that Japan does not have many street dustbins yet it is clean
So true. Bad behavior by a few Indians has tainted us internationally. You can feel the dislike so clearly without doing or saying any thing. What happened to Mr Dastur was horrific. The cabbie should be jailed. We have to change our attitudes. Money/affluence isn’t the be all & end all. Indians seem to have lost their intuitiveness & graciousness as a community. Where are the Sudamas gone?
Recently, here in Bengaluru, I too was abused by a grown up (physically) for asking him not to park his two wheeler blocking the pedestrian walkway. Even the appeals of the bank security staff fell on deaf ears.
Bob, it’s not just trash Bob! The pavements and sidewalks of every large city are ‘festooned’ with not just mere cowdung,but human excrement. It’s simply disgusting. We are a dirty unwashed country,with no respect for others.
I believe, like Charity, Civic sense too begins at home… However, not in our country…
Absolutely.
Civic sense simply means respect for our neighbours and environment. We cease to be civilized human beings in its absence.