What's in a name .....

When the mornings used to be fresh , misty and absolutely breathtaking, . The air fresh. Branches on the trees are laden with sparkling jewel like dew drops. The lush green grass carpet which would welcome you to take a stroll or just go for a relaxing workout or soulful meditation . Such a lovely way to start the was about these morning walks and the thoughts that your mind would go through as you look up at the sky, the trees, the lush green grass bed and the sunrise and realize just how small we are relative to the universe, yet we are equipped to do great things with each day. These used to be the morning moments whose memories would sojourn for the day , refresh the soul and renew your body .

But as its rightly said "humans have the capability to destruct anything and everything " and thus these soulful opportunities don't present themselves now :( .
me. First came the excretory wastes of animals . Next came shards of glass from broken bottles, plastic refuse, discarded fruit-juice packets, trails of gutka packets left as if for giving hiking clues to the visitors , food leftovers and waste from mobile eateries . Finally, the tree-fellers made an appearance with their motorised blades usurping the joy of enjoying fresh breeze ,walking barefoot on the grass or just lying down. This is the plight of Cubbon Park and may be many other parks too which have turned into a sea of litter . Littering of such big parks is the de-greening of a city whose historical appellations Garden City now seems like misnomer.

Every bit of litter has an owner and comes with a personal responsibility everyone would shun from .I would like to load the argument a bit further. It has to do with a particular social malaise that to a large degree afflicts us as a species – we take serious counter-measures and have strong convictions against direct risk (terrorism, theft, rape or violence), but turn a blind eye towards issues when the penalty is distributed.In India, most of the place look like a litter graveyard. Everywhere people litter without thinking for a second. Some people don’t use litter box where available, just dump their waste anywhere. And sometimes people find difficult to find a litter box to dispose waste. Why there are not enough litter boxes everywhere? By the way, why there is no law against litter on public places? This, to a large extent explains why we have filthy, claustrophobic parks growing in number where people litter without compunction .I guess one should better stay off from parks if picking up after is beyond his/her capabilities. Pick up every bit of garbage you throw whether it is biodegradable or not. Smokers, don’t forget the stubs. and gutka eaters, the wrappers are not for permanent route marking for hikers to come.

Last Friday was pretty interesting in many ways. We had a voluntary time off from the company and around 40 folks from our office decided to join hands with an organization called Cubbon Park Mithra Sangh and aid crusade against litter. Cubbon Park Mithra Sangha is small group of environment conscious people formed by Mr. Narendranath an architect in Dec 2006. This is a group of proactive people who instead of cribbing and whining about litter disposal and environmental degradation, decided to adopt a hands on policy to do something about the litter that has been tainting Cubbon Park . Armed with reusable trash bags, tongs and protective gloves, all the members of have been picking up the trash from the park .To do their bit for the environment and in the process promote environmental awareness, already the group have adopted the Bal Bhawan portion of the park for trash clearance . It has started the task of spreading awareness among the users by picking up garbage over week ends and weekdays . It has also awakened the Horticulture department and have been successful in their endeavors of getting more trash cans , flower beds etc .
They have also networked with many corporate organizations , ngo's etc to scale their project to big heights .

It was a fun experience for me and people from very high positions who wouldnt be into the cleaning of their houses turned up to exhibit civic responsibility displaying that it must be a priority for everyone. We started as two groups going in one two lines. But soon we were drifting off to different directions. We had to wind up sooner than we thought because of the huge bundle of plastic bottles , gutka sachets , wrappers , DIAPERS , cigaratte stubs , plastic cups , torn cloth pieces that were collected. That was a little shocking considering we found the park in quite a good shape from far :).
Then we had a good discussion headed by Rajesh Dangi who collected our feedbacks and told us about the steps to be a part of CSPM. There is just a lot of things you need to take care of before getting stamped as an initiative! But Rajesh and team, undoubtedly worked hard and made things a lot easier for all of us! Kudos.

It was sheer pleasure to watch the commitment and dedication of every single member.
While cleaning I thought that one day of cleaning will not amount to anything but I realized by end of the day that if we will keep on doing it until it forces people to take notice and realize that it falls on every individual to make a difference, realize that litter belongs to bin and not the garden.

Trust me when you are out there and doing these things, you get this feeling of actually doing what you want to see happen around you. That one feeling is worth all the effort.So, the next time you are walking down any street munching on biscuits or digging into a packet of your favourite chips, think about the effort that goes in to keep our city clean before throwing away the empty packet on the garden/roads.I had some great learnings I would like to share :-

1) It took the guys throwing gutka packets in the garden to make me realize that I am not paid a dime for my cleaning efforts so far. Some of them were shocked to learn that I was picking up their ‘Gutka’ and ‘Pan’ covers in that blazing Friday afternoon for no charges whatsoever. Cheryl please note :)

2) It is impossible to clean the clean even the cleanest looking piece in a day as it is indeed a reality folks, for every piece we picked up there were hundred more lying in the sand .

3) It was awesome fun meeting different people and one of them was a walking encyclopedia . I end up learning some great stuff from great guys .

4) I realized last Friday how grossly uninformed I was in the field of waste management. So the time is ripe to read and learn more.


It was a wonderful experience for me and all I would say is life’s too short to be apathetic. It’s too short not to love your Mother Earth. And although the world is not a perfect place, each day we can do our best to make it better :) Please make use of the "Use Me's " and lets keep up the name "Garden City "