Sadly, I'm just a stupid common man
Every morning, I walk to work crossing on my way an empty dustbin with much garbage strewn around it than inside it that makes it the habitat for plenty of flies & mosquitoes and emanates a foul smell that triggers most of the sensitive passers-by to promptly close their noses. And the problem is thus solved with nothing more than a pair of fingers.
India is a single huge country; rather, a lot of smaller countries put together; cultures, I'd say. Each culture has its own way of life and thought processes, so it's hard to unite them all so easily. But one thing that seamlessly unites them is cleanliness, or the lack of it. It would be arrogant & foolish to claim that all the cultures fail to maintain some standard at being clean, but not to say that the people do. After all, it's the people who define the other. I haven't traveled much of India, but with whatever I have, I'd say that one can't rate the sanitary level across the country to be uniform. When it comes to roads, the cleanest I can ever recollect of having been to would be those around Rashtrapathi Bhavan, Delhi, and some near the beach road at Chennai. These are only pockets, and most metros, I believe, would have such in its financially & politically important ones.
I only have limited knowledge of limited things on this case; but I hope I've conveyed my vent clear enough. Certain things The poor state of my universe pricks every percentage of my self within and there's a growing sense of anger and disgust towards myself when I arrive at the fact that I have done / been able to do absolutely nothing about such things as these. That I can & that I should - leads to doing something about this, but those wishes don't align with my necessities & the expectations I'm expected to fulfill - and this angers me even more for such a worthless earthling. Sadly, I'm just a stupid common man living in a sea of stupider people and a significant number of wise ones; and I'm beginning to lose faith in the significant.
It's easy to sound responsible & wanting to bring about a change in the society. It's not to be & do so.
India is a single huge country; rather, a lot of smaller countries put together; cultures, I'd say. Each culture has its own way of life and thought processes, so it's hard to unite them all so easily. But one thing that seamlessly unites them is cleanliness, or the lack of it. It would be arrogant & foolish to claim that all the cultures fail to maintain some standard at being clean, but not to say that the people do. After all, it's the people who define the other. I haven't traveled much of India, but with whatever I have, I'd say that one can't rate the sanitary level across the country to be uniform. When it comes to roads, the cleanest I can ever recollect of having been to would be those around Rashtrapathi Bhavan, Delhi, and some near the beach road at Chennai. These are only pockets, and most metros, I believe, would have such in its financially & politically important ones.
- An "ASI-protected" 9th century Chola temple near Thanjavur had one of its sanctum sanctorums used as a restroom.
- The banks of Yamuna at the Taj Mahal was overflowing with plastics & stinking of sewage.
- Once considered to grant salvation on a mere dip in it, the river Cooum has, from being a waterway, become a "stinking cesspool" and I've heard not once, not twice, but thrice about its revival, only to see nothing being done; there now seems to a sum of Rs. 3000 Cr. allocated to the restoration of this river; I'm hopeful.
- The most recent read that shocked me was of the description of the Ganges by a Chinese man traveling across India. I'm sure I can't write myself down this better than what Shekhar Kapur did on this.
- And more recently, adding to the already-rampant deforestation in our country, a panel formed by the Govt. has apparently suggested the denotification of 1 lakh acres of forest land to build the capital of the to-be-formed Telengana, instead of procuring occupied lands for it would be "expensive"; the funnier part is: the panel also seems to have added that creating such a forest area would be "easy" (a colleague-friend of mine read to me this that was published in a Telugu daily; I couldn't find it online, and hence don't have any source to link it with).
I only have limited knowledge of limited things on this case; but I hope I've conveyed my vent clear enough. Certain things The poor state of my universe pricks every percentage of my self within and there's a growing sense of anger and disgust towards myself when I arrive at the fact that I have done / been able to do absolutely nothing about such things as these. That I can & that I should - leads to doing something about this, but those wishes don't align with my necessities & the expectations I'm expected to fulfill - and this angers me even more for such a worthless earthling. Sadly, I'm just a stupid common man living in a sea of stupider people and a significant number of wise ones; and I'm beginning to lose faith in the significant.
It's easy to sound responsible & wanting to bring about a change in the society. It's not to be & do so.
