Bits of Paper

I am walking into Satkar Residency Manipal to catch up with my classmates who I have not met for 28yrs.

Out comes a man, chucks a wrapper, he walks few steps, pulls out a pack of cigarettes, sticks one into his mouth and chucks the empty packet, and he also stamps out it for a good measure.

He moves to the corner of the car park and puffs away, around his feet there are more stubs, obviously this a routine place where puffing is done.

Yet like most Indian kids who went to “English Medium school” he must worn his annual day costume and performed the action song…Bits of paper lying on the floor.

We laugh, and ridicule the entire endeavour of swach banega bharat, we shake our heads with intellectual detachment and shame, yet we do nothing about people like this “Chucker” who by the way was the manager of the Satkar residency.

It would have been well within his power to create a dustbin. I did picked up the packet and asked someone at the foyer where I could throw it, he took it from me, and threw it out right into the next compound.

On the road trip with NDTV for the swach banega india, we heard villagers bemoan that people chuck plastic out that not only dirties the environment it also suffocates the plants, this essentially means we are talking about the Urban, literate-yet-uneducated population.

Maybe the saas-bahu serials can win some brownie points by incorporating subtle messages of dustbins around the house, or dustbins along the street. Segregation of waste etc.

Some day definitely Swach Bharat will be a reality.