Sharm-ka-taaj

I had been to Mahabaleshwar this week. Well, four days this week. And I missed Criminal Minds for it. I am going to make-good that sometime soon, but what I am now writing is about an advertisement I watched on TV.

Aamir Khan was on it, and it was about Indians lacking, in general, a sense of pride and joy in keeping their surroundings clean. I, at the risk of being labelled an unpatriotic twerp, I wonder how apathy and selfishness amongst us Indians have reached those alarming levels of caring to be clean, but not enough about keeping clean. So, spitting and urinating and defecating in the open, wiping your hands well enough only to push the tissue out of the window (discreetly, ‘sophisticatedly’), and forcing others to think your way—considering garbage to be carried around as some burden that needs carting around would feature on the top no-no list.

To say that all of us are like that would be a gross humiliation of Indian values. The fact that we have been an agricultural nation, but are no more exclusively that, hasn’t, I guess, registered properly in our consciousnesses. Fifty years ago, our wastes were hugely only biodegradable. Now, for we have extended our arms in the plastic industries, we have more medical and chemical and non-biodegradable garbage we ever had before. We who say ‘बूँद-बूँद से ही सागर बनता है।‘(the sea is, but made of drops of water) fail to understand that every small piece of toxic addition to the environment is actually affecting our living and others’.

I don’t know if the ad-campaign will attain its goals as soon as it hopes to do, but I believe that if there is a शर्म का ताज campaign and if they take volunteers, I am resolutely going to be a part of it.