Trash in India

I returned from India yesterday with many thoughts on the country, its people, and where it is headed. I went home to Mumbai, and traveled around Delhi, Agra, Jaipur and Goa. I saw incredibly beautiful sights in Humayun's Tomb, the Taj Mahal, and Gandhiji's home, and at the same time poverty, inequality, and trash...a lot of trash. India is truly a fascinating country - I still have not figured out how it functions, but it does, in incredible ways, and the consequences of how it functions result in copious amounts of "visible" trash as I like to call it. I am pretty sure that the US produces more trash than India, but most of it is invisible.

Over the next few weeks, I will try to develop theses on trash in India. I will try to explain the problem in the context of its attitude, history, culture, demographics, landscape and natural resources. I have seen litter and trash in the most beautiful premises on Earth, and in places that you would hope people would want to keep "clean."

But as I gather and coalesce my thoughts, here are some pictures for you to mull over...

A park at Chandni Chowk in Delhi

On our way to Jama Masjid in Delhi

Outside Grant Road station in Mumbai

A sidewalk in Ghatkopar, Mumbai

A view from the top of Ramniranjan Jhunjhunwala College (my college), Ghatkopar (West), Mumbai

Back home

I am leaving for India tomorrow. I am anxious and excited. I will be going home, to Mumbai, for a week, and then my sister, Suzanne and I will be traveling around North India - Delhi, Agra, Jaipur and Kashmir - for two weeks. I am not planning on posting anything then until I return on the 30th of August. I am sure I will come back with many thoughts and pictures, which I am looking forward to sharing with you all.

Love,
Darshan

A different view

My last post was about spoiling untarnished landscapes with our trash. Here are some thoughts from Lydia, about a landscape just miles away from Xidatan:

"It's really amazing to see how some people live, in other countries, with different lifestyles, and perhaps even different views on life. I know that the people in Northern China are, for the most part, very poor, and while many of them don't pay attention to the impact they have on their own surroundings, you can tell that some really do care about how beautiful the unspoiled landscape is. I'm sending another picture to you, this one taken mere kilometers away from Xidatan. It's from the Dongdatan Valley, where I didn't see a single piece of trash. You can see the yurt and tent where people live. All of Northern China has the potential to be so beautiful. The people who live there (mostly sheepherders/yak herders) clearly have access to the plastic bottled sodas and whatnot sold in Xidatan. The contrast between these two locations lies only in how the people who live there treat their landscape."

-Lydia