Current Affairs : Stray Dogs and Trash
Today a stray dog bit my mom on her morning walk. Previously stray dogs have attacked tourists and carried away small children and killed them.
Animal rights activists and compassionate neighbours believe in feeding stray dogs and keeping them on the streets. They feed the dogs but don’t keep them at home.
The dogs bark at, threaten and bite people they don’t recognise.
Trash clearance is an issue in Bangalore. Even after the muncipality took over trash collection, the privateers go around in the govt. vehicles and only collect trash from people who pay them extra. There are now trash touts, or bribing to get your trash collected. They come as they please.
When the trash guys get irregular, other people tie trash to the tree in front of our house. Their problem is over. The stray dogs that they feed, pull the trash down and make a mess.
Where people see a mess in India they add their own trash to the pile. It occurs to no one to clear it. I have been sweeping the road in front of my house for 4 months now, the muncipality workers come only once in a month for sweeping.
I had written to our MLA that our trash was not getting cleared and after a while the big dumps were cleared. But people started piling up trash near the anganwadis no less.
It is normal to blame the large floating and migrating population for the trash situation. But the educated and long term residents also contribute to the problem and not to the solution.
In olden days our civic sense was built into our religion, cleanliness was super important. With the relentless attack on Hinduism and Brahminism, civics was separated from religion. Secularism separated education from religion. In the courts people swear on a bhagavad gita they have never read. With commercialisation of social values, passing exams to get jobs to make money is the highest virtue.
I have seen an MBA with an MNC job chucking an empty cococola bottle onto the highway right after a temple visit and cutting red lights.
I feel that Bangalore is the new Ujjain of India, there is high learning in Vedas and Science, high earning in jobs and business, but there is less civic sense in the people than is necessary. Yes, maybe we are better than some other places on India, but it is not good enough.
I try not to obsess about trash and stray dogs, I try to think pUrNAt pUrNam udachyatE but it is very hard for me.
I try to think that s’ivudi aagnya lEnidE cheemayina kuttadu. It doesn’t help.
I know that many people are indifferent to dirt, rudeness, ignorance and corruption.
Like Jack Sparrow, I would like to say “bloody pirates”.
Today I was upset with my mom being bitten by the dog. Incidentally, today, the dog catchers came to remove the stray dogs from my street. Maybe some neighbours had complained. The ones with the small babies. But the compassionate dog lovers fought with them and claimed the street dogs were their pets. They should have kept them in their own homes then.
But even those who own dogs let them evacuate their bowels under the tree in front of our house. Nobody seems to care how much pain and inconvenience we are caused by their messy habits.
I used to sit in a swing outside to chant vishnu sahasranamam, but what I see now are people emptying their bladders and intestines on a vacant site nearby, around which the owner built a compound.
So sad. So distracting. People say I’m a perfectionist, may be requiring cleanliness is wrong. But dirt I don’t like. 
And as if this is not enough, the rich countries dump their trash here also.. and their people wrinkle their noses at us!
Double Sigh!!
Author : Satya Sarada Kandula : All Rights Reserved
