I get a lot of complaints from my friends, colleagues and relatives that we do things suddenly. I put it the other way around. Our plans are like milk kept on the hot plate. All of a sudden it boils and spills out and everyone realizes that milk has boiled. The Shringeri and Horanaadu, in short, ShoraNaadu trip was one such plan the got brewed instantly and noticed by many quickly.
I look at everything that is happening inside India as an outsider. I want to, especially when I travel. I constantly re-invent myself to get better at planning from various types of information to make sure my trips are smooth and enjoyable even if I could collect or cannot collect. Hence, it is always a bitter-sweet experience even if you are visiting the same place for a second time.
First thing you learn is to accept that the plans that you make in India cannot work like the plans that you are used making and implementing outside India. My friends and relatives in India look at me as a complainer even if I suggest simple solutions that can work to the problems I find or see. I target youngsters to speak my mind. I believe they are the ones who have to worry about passing on India in a better shape than they found it to their children. When they have such a huge responsibility shouldn’t we help the cause?
I am not saying things are not improving in India. Along with the improvements there are new problems that no one wants to accept as a problem and make attempts to solve.
The major problem or the way the many Indians (both educated and uneducated) think is the way in which they consider anything outside their homes as a public place to dump garbage. They sometimes blame the originators, and at other times the regulators and many on the other educated or uneducated people who contribute to the problem. Even if they follow the rules, they believe that their single act cannot solve the problems created by many.
The are wrong! Hopelessly wrong!
It is an escapist attitude. Someone commented laughingly that one of our acts of packing up our garbage, to throw at the nearest garbage bin when we see one, as an act of carrying garbage home!
This perception must change! When can it change? How can it change?
Someone once told me that if we are mindful of finding a place for the things that we possess, use and throw, we can make this place called earth a wonderful place to live without any regulations of any kind! How true! We are pretty good at the first two.
Any use of things we possess generates garbage. Garbage that you create should find a place on this beautiful place we call Earth.
Paths are made for you to walk around comfortably, and not to litter garbage; roads are built for vehicles to move around, not for garbage; tracks are built for train travel, not garbage; irony of it all is the air travel! We carry the garbage along with us till such time we can find a place to dump. When we do that for the most expensive mode of travel, why not think same way for other less expensive modes of travel?
Secondly, it does not matter how poor or rich you are to be clean and tidy when you are using anything that does not belong to you and is provided to you as service – paid or unpaid. We keep saying all good things will happen for those who have patience. Why then we see so much of rush to behave otherwise and get treated like animals when we move around as crowd.
The treatment of crowd at Shoranaadu receiving the blessings was good and may be thousand times better than the crowds who visit Tirupathi. However, the same cannot be said about public hygiene. While Shringeri and Tirupathi excelled, Horanaadu failed.
The experience at Tirupathi? TTD may stand for Total and Terrible Disrespect to crowd who come there to receive blessings.