INDIA GATE

Hi all,

 

 

        Just wanted to share something with you guys.....

 

 

Yesterday being a Sunday, i decided to pay a visit to India Gate.

 

A short walk of 20mins and i was there. It was around 5:30PM and there was a huge crowd at the India gate. All around i could see, people were sitting on the lawns around the monument, having fun with their families. There were some shallow water bodies/fountains around the place and young kids were splashing about the place. Vendors ( bhelpuri, candy floss, ice cream, balloons...etc) were having a busy time ,attracting attention and selling their wares. Standing at the India Gate, i could see the outline of the Rastrapati Bhavan against the setting sun. In all, it was a pretty sight...except for....the lawns all around were scattered with trash(empty bottles, all flavours of Ruffles Lays covers with a pose of Saif grinning on them ,paper plates and what not),the water was a greenish colour with some of the earlier mentioned trash floating on it(i mean if fish were in that water they would have jumped out and preferred to end their lives than be in that water or would have mutated into some fearful creatures which we see in some Hollywood movies).

 

           I bought some Bhel Puri,and stood watching the kids splash about in the water. Many people passed me, or came and stood near me and i could overhear their conversations. They were all saying chiiii dekho ye sab kitna ghanda hai(this is so dirty), persuading their kids not to enter the water. But again they were not hesitating to throw whatever trash they had in their hands wherever they were walking.

Cant blame them entirely as there was no proper distribution of dustbins about the place. I could only see some situated far away.

I felt like going upto these individuals and tell them "You are further dirtying up the place .Why cant you put some effort and throw stuff in the dustbins."...You know what response i'll get. Either the facial expression "Who the hell are you. Why dont you mind your own business!" or #!@@#?$^*!(Ghaliya). i could say like that only to my family memebers, friends and people i am acquainted with, and thats why i couldnt stop myself from writing this mail to you people :-)

 

Its the general human mentality. If the surrounding place is clean like the ITPL lawns, people would hesitate to litter it. They would look for a proper place to dispose stuff. If the place is already littered up, they would just toss the empty bottle or ice cream wrapper into the open without a second thought. In India, we dont have proper waste management, there are no dustbins at public places, and even if there are ,many are often in a bad condition, overflowing to the brim, and have a cow or a dog attached to them, scourging for food. But there is a chance that they will get cleaned up sometime. When we have some  unwanted stuff on our hands and we are outside our home/office, we dont hesitate to throw them onto the road/footpath...even simple things like a toffee we just pop the toffee into our mouth and the wrapper onto the road, is it such a heavy thing that we cant pocket the wrapper and dispose it when we reach our home/office and find a dustbin. There is no use of praising foreign lands for their cleanliness and neatness. Unless we put in our bit to keep our surroundings clean whenever we can....things will be just the way they are.

 

 Give it some thought !!