Showing posts with label big B. Show all posts
Showing posts with label big B. Show all posts

Saturday, 26 May 2018

60-PM MR.MODI'S SWATCHCHTAA ABHIYAAN......BLEH.......MY EXPERIENCES

Posting advertisement videos and print media sloganeering is not enough to motivate people to keep their surroundings clean.  The rich people are not bothered and will discard bottles and used tissue and food containers and cans, from their car windows.   The poor are not bothered either.  They will urinate at any 'secluded' spot or any corner of the road or between parked cars, and they will spit any where and from any place.  Shopkeepers throw rubbish just outside their shop and no one can do anything about it.

Often there is no choice, but to throw wrappers and containers onto the space away from your own.  Especially train and bus travellars, prefer to discard rubbish through the window of their vehicle, rather than into the vehicle.  No one is bothered to put rubbish into their bags.  Travelling by train, all passengers throw used paper teacups, vadapau paper trays,  soiled newspaper of samosas or vadas, empty pet water bottles, bhel wrappers, biscuit and chocolate wrappers, etc.  The rubbish crescendoes just after Dadar, Karjat, Lonavla. How else should the travellers discard their rubbish?  When you travel in the Japanese bullet train or on the train up the Swiss alps, each bogie has a garbage bin, but then there are limited passengers, only as many as can be seated.  No standees are allowed.  On Indian trains, if one is lucky enough to get into the train and stand, sit or squeeze between co-travellers, then you are lucky.

So, the message given by the governing bodies that plastic needs to be banned,  but all the garbage is not  plastic.  Even paper rubbish is an eyesore and an environmental hazard.

If one travels by any local train or outstation train from Mumbai,  it is a horrible sight to look out of the window.  The worst is Ulhasnagar, because it is extremely full of garbage and even the stench is unbearable.  How do the people there survive and remain healthy, is beyond belief.

The defecating and urinating on the train tracks has not diminished.   When the slum dwellers have to sleep on footpaths or roads, where are they expected to defecate?  Urban beggars and slum dwellers, defecate on plastic bags and then push it into any drain, the cover of which they manage to pry open.

I am not a homeless person, but even I have a problem of not getting to use a public facility when needed urgently.  Some of the bad spots are CST terminus, Churchgate station, Crawford Market, Gateway, Byculla, Fountain, Mumbai university, and of course any local railway station.  Even if the loos are available, for pay and use, the doors are broken, or they are soiled, or unclean, too crowded, not safe as the doors of the loos are broken, or the ladies loos are locked, etc.   The Zoo has been renovated with an ugly facade, sporting snakes, but the toilets are only accessible to the security guards, public has to use the badly maintained prehistoric loos inside the zoo, horrible!  Shop till you drop at Colaba Causeway and then control your urge to urinate, unless you want to stand in an endless line at the public loo near the Gateway, or use the one at the Macdonalds outlet or Westside.

MLAs and MPs should visit the public loos and check out the sorrowful state that most of them are in.  Maybe Salman Khan should visit the CST loo and improve it, like he did to the prison loos that he had experienced.  Please sir, the governing bodies, especially the Shiv Sena, is indifferent to the problems of the public,  you could do yeoman service instead.  Of course, the Big B only wants to be featured in expensive ads about public defecation etc,  only if were to walk on the road and visit a loo at any station, or travel in a local train,  then I would believe all that he advertises, otherwise your swatchch Bharat ad campaign  is just Modi-worship-Modi-appeasement.  No one would urinate on the road, if the alternative was feasible, available and reachable.

I wonder if the high and mighty, the government 'lal batti' politicians, rich and very rich actors, directors, business persons, who have drivers, every worry about them when they wait in the parked cars, about facilities available for their use.


Saturday, 1 October 2016

38 - THE QUEEN OF THE SUBURBS

Today, I had to travel by the local train upto Virar for some official work.  I only travel by the local train if I have to go very far, very fast, as compared to slow bus travel.  Since I seldom travel by the local train,  the experiences and scenes flash into my senses and get analyzed into statistics.

Although it was a Saturday, being a half day for most office goers and an off day for many academic institutes,  the train was very crowded.  But today, in the crowded ladies' compartment, a good samaritan actually offered me a seat for some time and stood all that while, and then even advised me as to the best place to stand, in order to avoid the onslaught of the incoming crowds that kept boarding the train upto Nallasopara.  It made me so happy to have this empathetic lady share her seating time for a while.

The bad memory was when the train approached Bandra,  the litter along the boundaries of the tracks was disgusting and demoralising and smelly.  An assault on the senses.   How can human beings live in that filth?  The entire length of the track, almost one kilometer before Bandra station, is lined with slums and beyond their ramshackle abodes are piles and piles of plastic, paper, thermocole, rags, and rotting vegetable waste.  Rats, flies and God knows what other pests are breeding in that area.   Please please, Bandra residents,  make the approach to your suburb clean and green.  I beseech to all its famous and rich residents, the Bollywood big shots etc, all visitors need to feel a sense of the 'Queen of the suburbs',  and you should make an effort to live upto its name.  Mr Shahrukh Khan, you have recorded a TV ad about 'swachch bharat',  but you only care for your bungalow and your home in Dubai,  you must GIVE towards improving the suburb that has brought you fame,  but it only has the shame of being a filthy public space mostly.

And then when Vasai was announced on the intercom system in the train,  the nose and eyes had another stinky onslaught from a sewage oulet or a large 'nalla'.   The only saving grace was that, the monsoons have turned the open areas into lush green growth.  So wherever we can view the greenery through the moving train, it is so beautiful and clean.

The local trains are the 'lifeline' of Mumbai but all along the tracks are 'deathlines' of filth, poverty, garbage and open air toilets.  Dear Salman Khan, you sent tankers of water to the drought-affected districts of Marathwada, yet you fail to notice the poverty and squallor of the poor in your very own neighbourhood?  I feel that 'Being Human' does not mean that Mumbai only gets the expensive stores with that logo, but that you do the humanitarian work for Mumbaikars too, please.  Do not forget that it is this city that has brought you your name, fame and where you have grown up.  You could give back by maybe, building good homes for the railway line squatters.   It will also be a more lasting contribution towards society, than the water donation that you had undertaken in 2013 to the drought hit Beed district.

October the second has been declared as THE cleanliness drive day for all Bharat,  and there will be lots of photo ops by politicians and richie riches like MsNeeta Ambani and her ilk.  But nothing really really effective at all.  Nothing that would deplete their pockets,  only silly whitewashed news stories, with brooms and buckets and expensive gloves, for maybe 5 to 10 minutes, just as long as it takes the cameras to flash.  If only each celebrity or large company, would adopt the wards, then it would lead to concrete progress towards cleanliness.  Mr.Amitabh Bachchan, you could easily adopt B ward, and it could be the 'Big B' B ward and compete with the Salman Khan A ward etc.  And the great Neeta Ambani C ward, and the Katrina Kaif D ward.  Not forgetting a E ward takeover by the great Kapil Sharma,  he will of course then be forgiven all the 'gapla' he did at his Versova flat.  And the likes of Anil Kapoor, who only want to rake in the moolah and the name and fame without any give back to society.  You have launched your daughter and now your son,  pray please do spend on beautifying the city that adores your every action and relative.  Come on people, Gandhiji is still revered all over the world, you could be revered at least in your 'karmbhoomi'.

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