India’s National Sport - Littering

Shashi Tharoor’s speeches have been vandalising YouTube relentlessly like a broken record about how great India was, the amazing potential it has now, and the future looks spectacular. I swear to lord and his smarter cousin - satan, I’ve really tried, from the bottom of my soul, to like Mr. Tharoor, but even after I overlook his obnoxiously imperial vocabulary, it’s impossible to disregard his delusional assertions & implicit jingoism. Here’s the deal - He never got to witness what real world feels like because he won the first prize in the birth lottery - a multi-millionaire pedigree. When it comes to scholastic intelligence, Shashi will crucify me like Australia did India in the 2003 cricket World Cup final, but in raw street intelligence, I will turn the tables & knock him out in round one like Tyson did throughout most of his career. 

If, like me, you’re going to JLF ’18 (Jaipur Literature Festival), take a glance at Shashi Tharoor’s shoes & then at mine. You will find one conspicuous distinction - his shoes will be pristine & spotless - mine, on the contrary, will have the stories that my shoes have collected from walking 1000s of miles in the crude streets of this country whose people’s favourite sport is to throw everything they don’t need anywhere - with flamboyance, without consideration.

All the past greatness of India is anecdotal or conjecture, present potential is contentious, and future is wishful thinking at best. On the contrary, India has been littering throughout its history, is at this moment as I write this letter, and will continue to litter deep into the future are undeniable prima facie facts.

Mr. Modi’s seminal Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has had a lukewarm response from Billiondia. It’s paramount to understand why a country that literally believes everything Modi says isn’t able to follow a relatively easy initiative. It’s not as if he’s asking everyone to join the army or donate 20% of their wealth to the welfare of the poor. He’s just asking to keep that chocolate wrapper in your pocket till you find a dustbin. Frankly, unless you’re an absolute apathetic imbecile, it can’t be that difficult, can it? At this juncture, I will talk about that beautiful thing - DNA. 



DNA makes us who we are. For instance, if you challenge a ‘homophobic & physically unfit’ person to either run five kms everyday for a month or stop being homophobic. And you give him an entire year to do one of the above things, which one do you think he is more likely to accomplish. Homophobia is psychological - a mental state and Fitness is physical. Though it takes zero physical effort to stop being homophobia, it’s nearly impossible to stop being one unless a miraculous epiphany or a momentous incident alters your fundamental set of beliefs. The school of thought that Indians litter because they’re lazy & inconsiderate is only half the story. Indians litter because their DNA subconsciously tells them there is a certain strata of people - the lower caste - born to clean up after them. After having a meal at McDonald’s, they don’t pick up their trays & empty them in the trash cans planted within five steps partially because they’re lazy & inconsiderate, but mainly because they don’t believe it’s their job. This mentality also applies at homes and predominantly in patriarchal families where women of the house take care of the cleaning as it’s their job to nurture, cook, and clean after men. Being born the son/daughter of a cleaner is stigmatic. And paradoxically, the lower classes, a lot of whom clean professionally, litter endlessly because they don’t want to be associated with garbage beyond the point they can’t control. No wonder, poor people often choose to beg instead of earning a living cleaning streets or houses.

Adding to the misery, Indians simply refuse to keep anything with them that is of no value to them. The moment someone finishes a packet of chips, the empty packet instantly turns into this poisonous snake stuck to their body, which must be shaken off instantaneously. The moment a passenger hops off a bus, train, he chucks the ticket stub at the speed of light. You would have noticed Indians don’t pull the airline stickers off their bags because it shows they travel by air - a sign of prestige.

Getting education from the ultra-modern schools & universities, wide-spread government-run initiatives, dynamic individual endeavours, and rapid influx of global values will continue to stir India’s conscience, but they will never be able to shake its in-built value system, which is both consciously & sub-consciously caste & class dominated.

Till this disgraceful school of thought is burned & buried from Indians’ psyche holistically, the citizens of this holy country will continue to litter shamelessly. Though Tharoor often pronounces to the world India is coming, can you think of one developed country whose citizens don’t bat an eye-lid before brutally destroying its inherent beauty with paan & pee stains. You can’t because there isn’t one.



Shashi Tharoor’s unstained shoes are an incisive metaphor of this country - Where the rich with their polished English accents & thriving careers vociferously sing praises of India’s glorious past, present and future - Whereas, in reality, a country whose majority can’t afford a pair of shoes & those incharge of keeping country’s Tharoors’ designer shoes and palatial homes spotless wear torn chappals & live in ghettos, can build the supreme Taj Mahal, but it can never be truly great.