A Nullah flows besides our office premises. One of those many watercourses that cut through the Mumbai's cityscape carrying garbage, industrial waste and other unimaginably stinky and dirty things that a whole damn city is capable of discarding... Like dark blood its flows, from God-knows-where to destinations unknown... Its murky waters, always dirty, dark brown and almost completely opaque carry the flotsam of an entire city on its back... A crude and over-used industrial waste disposal system that originated in a bygone era, but is still being used heavily... It is by no means a small nullah. Well fortified by big stone walls on either side, and running 10-15 feet below street-level, it hardly ever over-flows, even in rainy season when it becomes a small raging river.
Usually I hardly ever look at it. Human nature: we hardly ever notice the obvious, the routine and the unsavory... And the nullah is certainly an obvious and unsavory sight... Nothing remarkable about it anyway... The other day, hurrying on my way to the office, I happened to look down from the footpath at the nullah below. Its at right angles to the road. The dark water flows towards the road and then disappears below it, as if its passing below a bridge. As it flows, it lets go of some of the weight its been carrying on its back, depositing debris at the base of the 'bridge' as it passes below the road. There are plastic bottles, plastic bags, random thermocol pieces, and a lot of other dirty discarded floating bric-a-brac that no one wants. All this bric-a-brac has formed a small floating island of sorts at base down below. Right in the middle of this island I spotted a guy.
He was a young fellow, still in his teens, assuming from his young looks and his wiry body-frame. Standing waist-deep in all that dirty smelly muck... He was holding a plastic gunny bag over his back with one hand. With the other, he was sorting through the floating debris, salvaging recyclable waste... Not the most desirable job in the world... As I hurried along to my office, the image of the teenager stuck with me. I couldn't shake off the thought of him, wading though all that dirty garbage carelessly discarded by a careless city...
Why should he have to clean up other peoples' mess? Wading through all that stinking garbage and disposed (may be toxic?) chemicals, trying to salvage things that can, and should, be recycled?
The obvious answer is - for money. For subsistence. For his daily bread... Thanks to our system which solely relies on economic inequality of individuals to make it work... This system, that transcends beyond borders and countries and races and castes, is what makes our world work the way it does today... And this little fellow is one little cog in the entire complex machinery... So, we, who are economically better disposed than he is, can afford the luxury to get rid of our crap any which way we want. Someone will take care of it for us... Blissfully ignorant about what he must be going through, to clean up our crap... Of course, he is doing it 'voluntarily'. No one is making him do it... But is that not the way it works? No one makes us work. We do it on our own (even if we hate it and don't wish to)...
But I am wandering from the main issue here. The main issue being, that we (here I am referring to the entire human race...) are utterly careless about how we dispose the waste we produce, whether it be personal or industrial... Who gives two hoots about whether it is recycled or disposed off properly? As long as our home and offices and factories and streets and cities and dwellings are clean, we don't mind what happens to our waste. We don't even care to throw our crap in dustbins... We will throw it anywhere that's convenient to us...
As I write this, a crumpled ticket that I had discarded on my desk falls down. My friend looks at it and tells me to pick it up... I do so, but reluctantly - its a nuisance, so inconvenient, to put crap in its right place... Then I think about the boy in the nullah... I get up and throw the ticket in the trashcan, where it rightfully belongs... But I don't do this every time... It's simply too inconvenient... Sad but true... And what will happen to the ticket that I just put in the dustbin? Will it be recycled? Will it end up in a garbage dump where it will decompose over the years? And what about the waste that doesn't decompose? What happens to that?
In this modern age, we are producing, manufacturing and consuming our planet's resources at an unprecedented pace... I wonder what will happen if we continue this way? Its a staggering thought... Huge population + limited resources = massive inflation (high demand + short supply = duh!) Add to this equation the factor of economic inequality and we have a major breakdown of our system as we know it on our hands... I finally give up thinking about it... My thoughts wander back to the poor fellow toiling down there in the stinking crap-filled nullah. I feel sorry for his present and for the world's future, and get back to my daily routine business-as-usual...
Usually I hardly ever look at it. Human nature: we hardly ever notice the obvious, the routine and the unsavory... And the nullah is certainly an obvious and unsavory sight... Nothing remarkable about it anyway... The other day, hurrying on my way to the office, I happened to look down from the footpath at the nullah below. Its at right angles to the road. The dark water flows towards the road and then disappears below it, as if its passing below a bridge. As it flows, it lets go of some of the weight its been carrying on its back, depositing debris at the base of the 'bridge' as it passes below the road. There are plastic bottles, plastic bags, random thermocol pieces, and a lot of other dirty discarded floating bric-a-brac that no one wants. All this bric-a-brac has formed a small floating island of sorts at base down below. Right in the middle of this island I spotted a guy.
He was a young fellow, still in his teens, assuming from his young looks and his wiry body-frame. Standing waist-deep in all that dirty smelly muck... He was holding a plastic gunny bag over his back with one hand. With the other, he was sorting through the floating debris, salvaging recyclable waste... Not the most desirable job in the world... As I hurried along to my office, the image of the teenager stuck with me. I couldn't shake off the thought of him, wading though all that dirty garbage carelessly discarded by a careless city...
Why should he have to clean up other peoples' mess? Wading through all that stinking garbage and disposed (may be toxic?) chemicals, trying to salvage things that can, and should, be recycled?
The obvious answer is - for money. For subsistence. For his daily bread... Thanks to our system which solely relies on economic inequality of individuals to make it work... This system, that transcends beyond borders and countries and races and castes, is what makes our world work the way it does today... And this little fellow is one little cog in the entire complex machinery... So, we, who are economically better disposed than he is, can afford the luxury to get rid of our crap any which way we want. Someone will take care of it for us... Blissfully ignorant about what he must be going through, to clean up our crap... Of course, he is doing it 'voluntarily'. No one is making him do it... But is that not the way it works? No one makes us work. We do it on our own (even if we hate it and don't wish to)...
But I am wandering from the main issue here. The main issue being, that we (here I am referring to the entire human race...) are utterly careless about how we dispose the waste we produce, whether it be personal or industrial... Who gives two hoots about whether it is recycled or disposed off properly? As long as our home and offices and factories and streets and cities and dwellings are clean, we don't mind what happens to our waste. We don't even care to throw our crap in dustbins... We will throw it anywhere that's convenient to us...
As I write this, a crumpled ticket that I had discarded on my desk falls down. My friend looks at it and tells me to pick it up... I do so, but reluctantly - its a nuisance, so inconvenient, to put crap in its right place... Then I think about the boy in the nullah... I get up and throw the ticket in the trashcan, where it rightfully belongs... But I don't do this every time... It's simply too inconvenient... Sad but true... And what will happen to the ticket that I just put in the dustbin? Will it be recycled? Will it end up in a garbage dump where it will decompose over the years? And what about the waste that doesn't decompose? What happens to that?
In this modern age, we are producing, manufacturing and consuming our planet's resources at an unprecedented pace... I wonder what will happen if we continue this way? Its a staggering thought... Huge population + limited resources = massive inflation (high demand + short supply = duh!) Add to this equation the factor of economic inequality and we have a major breakdown of our system as we know it on our hands... I finally give up thinking about it... My thoughts wander back to the poor fellow toiling down there in the stinking crap-filled nullah. I feel sorry for his present and for the world's future, and get back to my daily routine business-as-usual...
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