Literally Littering

(The title is quite a tongue-twister though it doesn't mean much.)

(I participated in an activity by Kritagnyata, a group formed by students of CSE Dept, IITB. It was a cleanliness drive with the intention of making people aware of their social commitment. Here are some after-thoughts.)

A poet long back said that death was the leveller - during and after death, everyone came to the same level. When one died, there was no difference left between the person and the ones who died in the past.

There is another leveller much before death on the time scale of a person's life. Let me talk about it...

We are done drinking our coffee. We hurl the empty glass somewhere on the road.

We read 'Crush after use' on the mineral water bottle and crush the bottle with all our force but we do not see the more easy-to-understand 'Keep your city clean' image on the bottle.

Littering is the great leveller. You may be a king, an officer, a teacher, a student or a door-to-door salesman - you may be just anyone. The moment the chocolate wrapper, the flowers in the plastic bag tightly tied up or the polythene bag containing absolutely anything leaves your hand and does not reach a dust bin.... you all, irrespective of region, religion, occupation, gender have come to the same level. FYI, this level is certainly lower than all the levels known.

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A dumping ground is God. A Dumping ground is All-Powerful.

I can see the dumping ground smiling at me proudly. For it has brought (in better words, 'brought down') many men and women to the same level. All thanks to littering...