THAT's RUBBISH, WE INDIANS......Nah!!!

A few months back, a British MP remarked about the sick habit of Indians not knowing how to dispose of their garbage. Indians were termed as litterbugs. This accusation drew wrath from not only the British-Indians but also from our own homeland. We Indians creating a shit load of rubbish? Huh? WE!

Hmm….lets evaluate this. Well, well what do these people in the west do with their garbage- store it (as if they were some precious jewels) in a special container (read: dustbin) made for this purpose and kept in the kitchen. How disgusting! Store garbage in the kitchen, which is the second most sacred place after the puja room. How can we defy the rules of Vaastu-shanti? The best thing to do with your garbage is to throw it out of the window- what else is the window for, besides letting in air and light). Throw it on ‘your’ public roads (hey don’t we pay our taxes). The truth is we Indians are very particular about cleanliness. In fact we have clearly distinguished between our pure, pollution free personal spaces (i.e. our homes, offices etc) and the public spaces (i.e. anything and everything beyond our personal spaces) and have rightly used these public spaces for the purpose they have been designed for, basically to receive and collect our filth and rubbish (even our civic officials fail to have such well defined positions and jobs).

For us clean and quality things are extremely essential. We make it a point to buy footwear, clothes and things to wear from air conditioned shops (so what if we buy fruits, vegetables and things we eat from the roadsides). And lo! Who says that Indians always ape the western culture? Have we yet lost our obsession with ‘cleanliness’? Do we have dirt-free and sparkling roads like theirs? Aren’t our train compartments, lamp posts, bus-stops smeared with a foul smelling, red colored liquid, unlike theirs? Don’t we openly flout the bans on spitting and littering in public? They dare not disobey their rules and laws. In spite of all this we are often accused and ridiculed of mimicking the western life-styles and traditions. A big irony indeed!

As if all the torture wasn’t enough, these foreigners have now come up with a new phobia to harass us Indians. Global warming, carbon emissions, carbon foot-prints……Oh My God! Such gargantuan, incomprehensible names to the Indian mind. Ok! So it is not we who are eager to copy them , but they themselves wish to make puppets out of us and train us to optimize the use of garbage, make best out of waste, reduce, recycle, reuse……..use rubbish again!!!! They then carry on something about carbon emissions and how horrid carbon emissions (what’s that?) are. They educate us about the right and proper manner to deal with industrial emissions and all that crap. Oh! I am fainting. Someone please open up the window….