What’s common between dustbins and god? You may well ask, what kind of a silly question is that? It indeed is. But all the same it occurred to me one day when I was at work and had come out for a smoke.
Well I work for an IT company, and in keeping with current trends they have eliminated smoking inside the office. I fully endorse this practice. (Now only if the smokers could be eliminated). So they have smoking corners, only sometimes they are not really corners. Smoking spots, lets say. My office has a large open space (a plaza) and that’s where the smoking spots are. There are a few dustbins scattered around. But I notice that the smokers ALMOST NEVER use them to deposit the cigarette butts. The butts are strewn generously everywhere else. Almost as if smokers took special effort to NOT use the dustbins. Now are we smokers such a perverted and irrational lot ? Knowing IT people I am tempted to say yes, they are. But that’s another story.
The point here is that all the dustbins are placed in locations that have a very strong breeze, are exposed to sun and rain and have no place nearby to sit. So I mentioned these things to the Admin people. Why not shift the dustbins closer to where people smoke? Well, I was told they had done it before and one dustbin (or its contents) caught fire. As they say, no smoke-ing without fire.
Now a few lines about the dustbins themselves. There are two types. One is the steel thing in a rectangular shape. The top has a tray with sand/ pebbles to stub out cigarettes and the lower half can be used for dumping used coffee-cups and such things. This is a very American design. The other type is made of plastic/ fibre glass and usually in the shape of an animal cartoon character. Ducks, squirrels, penguins, monkeys, fish. I am sue you must have seen them in public places. This is a wholly Indian innovation. I think they first started appearing some 25 years ago and quickly became an irreversible and abominable part of the urban landscape In India. Look at one closely and you will realize why.
The cartoon animals have the most pained looking expressions. In some cases the animal figure is holding up the dustbin. The way it is positioned, pointing upwards, is too indelicate for me to even mention here.(Hint : its phallic) With the monkey, fish and the penguin the garbage has to be disposed into the mouth of the figure. So much for respect for wildlife. Finally, can we make a guess about a people/ culture by looking at their trash bins and the trash itself ? Well can YOU ? (more on this in a separate piece)
So where does god come in? Dustbins are like god. Useful and ubiquitous, but largely misplaced and neglected.
Well I work for an IT company, and in keeping with current trends they have eliminated smoking inside the office. I fully endorse this practice. (Now only if the smokers could be eliminated). So they have smoking corners, only sometimes they are not really corners. Smoking spots, lets say. My office has a large open space (a plaza) and that’s where the smoking spots are. There are a few dustbins scattered around. But I notice that the smokers ALMOST NEVER use them to deposit the cigarette butts. The butts are strewn generously everywhere else. Almost as if smokers took special effort to NOT use the dustbins. Now are we smokers such a perverted and irrational lot ? Knowing IT people I am tempted to say yes, they are. But that’s another story.
The point here is that all the dustbins are placed in locations that have a very strong breeze, are exposed to sun and rain and have no place nearby to sit. So I mentioned these things to the Admin people. Why not shift the dustbins closer to where people smoke? Well, I was told they had done it before and one dustbin (or its contents) caught fire. As they say, no smoke-ing without fire.
Now a few lines about the dustbins themselves. There are two types. One is the steel thing in a rectangular shape. The top has a tray with sand/ pebbles to stub out cigarettes and the lower half can be used for dumping used coffee-cups and such things. This is a very American design. The other type is made of plastic/ fibre glass and usually in the shape of an animal cartoon character. Ducks, squirrels, penguins, monkeys, fish. I am sue you must have seen them in public places. This is a wholly Indian innovation. I think they first started appearing some 25 years ago and quickly became an irreversible and abominable part of the urban landscape In India. Look at one closely and you will realize why.
The cartoon animals have the most pained looking expressions. In some cases the animal figure is holding up the dustbin. The way it is positioned, pointing upwards, is too indelicate for me to even mention here.(Hint : its phallic) With the monkey, fish and the penguin the garbage has to be disposed into the mouth of the figure. So much for respect for wildlife. Finally, can we make a guess about a people/ culture by looking at their trash bins and the trash itself ? Well can YOU ? (more on this in a separate piece)
So where does god come in? Dustbins are like god. Useful and ubiquitous, but largely misplaced and neglected.
1 comment:
as i keep repeating, smokers must be the only minority in the world for whom no one is ready to take up arms! talk abt bigotry.
a nice post. :-)
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