Something's rotten...?

Lets call a street party before the new agency starts to clean up our neighbourhood... and make it pot-luck!

What’s happened here in Chennai over the last few weeks?

Garbage everywhere – outside houses, on street corners, along pavements, at crossroads – in short, just about any old spot.

Even to jaded eyes grown accustomed over the years to filth, the mass seems much, much more than usual, and growing by heaps and mounds.

Apparently, the-guys-in-charge-of-clearing-up had to ‘postpone’ commencement of operations. Now, you imagine these are sterling folk, and so assume they had good reason for ...er... slacking off, but you wish they hadn’t.

Because Garbage, a natural result of life being lived, a cause-and-effect offshoot, can’t ever be ‘postponed’, right? Garbage has a tendency to make its presence felt, like those particularly dreadful relatives that infest all families... always needing something to be done about them. A reality you dread acknowledging, but cannot ignore.

Authorities, evidently, are trying – poor things. You read reports of earnest good intentions, of ‘mechanical sweepers’, ‘mass cleaning programmes’, ‘waste management’, and so on.

Meanwhile, the piles keep piling.

Rumour has it that ‘conservancy operations’ – what a clever way of putting it – have begun.

Chennai’s thankful.

Especially since a certain Bay was showing signs of peevishness, pointing out that it alone has copyright over concepts like ‘engulfing wave’..