IF ONLY! (TALES OF INCLUSIVITY) #Blogchatter #WriteAPageADay

                                                             Outside Suburbia

God made the world beautiful for a reason! He created flowers, green grass, scenic views, the purple mountains and the endless blue seas so that His latest creation, Man, would be able to look upon them and live a life of happiness and bliss.

However, Man decided to play the destroyer, priding in being a Know-All, and began to wreak havoc on Mother Nature, erasing the greens and the blues with grey structures of aluminium, glass and concrete. The seas were contaminated with factory wastes, the azure skies turned grey and polluted, the skyline turned into an unbroken line of buildings that aspired to touch the heavens themselves.

The old ancestral houses which lodged whole families within them, providing food from their adjoining lands, have now wholly disappeared. Families have broken up into little units, each unit creating its own brand of garbage and wastes that form giant heaps on the sides of the roads, mainly because the folk within are too lazy or too impatient to follow garbage segregation rules that bring down wastes to a bare minimum. Thus, every little unit consists of a clean little centre, surrounded by mounds of waste, mainly because the road is no man’s land.

There are many takers for this garbage – cows and dogs that scrabble around for scraps of food, along with beggars; scrap-dealers who hope to find a few odds and ends that they can sell, and a whole mountain of flies, insects and germs which thrive on what is a sumptuous feast for them. These unsightly mounds are the first thing that hit the eye, and then the nostrils with their unsavoury stench.

If only we could make these mounds disappear with one wave of a wand! Or click a finger and change this waste into something usable. Do we not have a sense of pride in our own surroundings? If only we could, each one of us, keep our own spaces clean and a little bit more, and stop throwing our garbage into our neighbour’s courtyard, imagine how clean the environment would be. It would be a patchwork of clean spaces, and then, if we could take one step more and beautify our spaces, our buildings and our skyline, our space would be a Paradise indeed.

This is what we need to pass on to our children, a lesson about loving the world they live in, and making it a more habitable place. Take a state like Kerala which is one of the cleanest in the country. There are innumerable factories making red tiles, that are not only attractive but eco-friendly as well. If only we could go back to the past when we lived in houses which were roofed with these self-same red tiles. Imagine God’s Own Country, green and verdant, with vibrant red roofs dotted across the state. What an eye-catching sight that would be! Akin to the Pink City, Jaipur, and the Blue City, Jodhpur, both in picturesque Rajasthan.

Along with that, if the roads could also be strengthened, what a pleasure it would be to drive across the state. One could train one’s eyes on the beautiful countryside instead of having one’s bones shaken to bits as one gets swallowed by potholes with gaping mouths. Taking the earlier example of keeping spaces clean, if councillors could concentrate on their areas and develop and beautify them, they would never have to worry about going out of power. The final word, of course, lies with the concerned governments which need to offer user-friendly solutions to issues like garbage disposal. Often, as one walks along the road, one finds a couple whizzing along in a two-wheeler, and suddenly, a plastic cover filled with waste is thrown across onto a field which is already brimming over with other similar packets. This is because there is no earmarked space for garbage disposal.

If only we could wish all the garbage in the world away!

“If only.  The saddest two words in any language.”

Maggie Osborne 

 

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