At a wedding event in a shrine the presiding priest called upon the guests who had come to bless the newly weds to proceed in a line to the altar for receiving bread and wine as a symbol of sacrament cautioning the congregation that only those who follow a particular faith were entitled to receive the sacrament. To ensure that everyone conformed to the custom, he sought to know the faith of the persons before the stage of bread-eating-wine-drinking. An elderly person, known for his large-hearted nature, when asked by the priest whether he belonged to the stipulation humbly replied that he was a human being, only to move away, thus mocking at the popular expression that all are equal in the territory of divinity. The above incident which took place some years ago in Mysuru serves to remind us that Indians in particular and human beings in general, unwittingly choose to identify themselves in a multitude of ways according to their religion, region, lingo, status in society, social identity hinting their distinction or otherwise such as urbanite, villager, tribal, slum-dweller, foreigner, officer and so on. To digress, even garbage, which is garbage by whichever way one looks at it, is identified by terms that are in common parlance nowadays, namely wet, dry, biodegradable, hazardous, electronic, organic, recyclable and so on, all cumulatively emerging as mountainous mass like in Mysuru leaving the administration aghast.

Granting that garbage is so inevitable that talking of zero-garbage is nothing short of utopia, the only option in dealing with the offending stuff seems to be giving up lifestyle based on materials such as plastic and electronic devices that garbage remains as residue, no matter what, how it is treated. Past generations, consciously or otherwise, have done it for centuries and therefore there is no reason to reject the option without facing the consequences.

While a part of the garbage mass that the administrations in cities of all dimensions are battling with some degree of success, the land seems to be hosting sections in its nearly 1.4 billion population hell-bent on bugging the rest by their unedifying conduct manifest in their words, deed and thought. Shouting provocative and abusive slogans in high-decibel voices, destroying public and private property, setting vehicles ablaze, creating obstruction to movement of people by staging road rage, defying the land’s laws, using rhetoric to instigate the millennial becoming radicals, not choosing to debate for resolving issues related to periodic measures and policies of successive Governments and so on.

Not meaning to stereotype the land’s people as bad apples in the fruit basket as it were and not intending to demean any Indian, likening the offending sections in the diaspora to garbage and portraying the tribe as garrulous garbage may not go well with that section, granting that their numerical strength although not overwhelming, the harm they are causing to the country and its law-abiding citizens is beyond words.