Price of turning cities into a dump yard

I made yet another attempt today – to walk to work. In the morning, it was just a lot of traffic and the smoke and dust was difficult to inhale, but walking back in the evening was really sickening. The sidewalks are either filled with litter, with fat rats running a mini-empire.. Or some stretches of sidewalks are open public urinals, toilets for men mostly… Or there are sudden lamp posts jutting out and sometimes it’s iron pipes that go nowhere, just serve the purpose of hurting the walker.

The price we pay for doing this is far more than just defacing a beautiful city. My office is about 2.5 kms from home and if the sidewalks were clean with less unruly traffic, I would walk to work everyday. Am sure like me, many people would love to walk to work especially when the weather is as gorgeous and the city is still dotted with beautiful trees. I am forced now to take the car, adding to the pollution. There are no gyms in France because everyone there walks everywhere 🙂 and in India today, you have a gym at every street corner and five sweet shops on the street – if only people could walk to work, the gym bodies will become fit, human bodies again at far lesser cost.

Wish we could have cycling tracks … for a country that has so many people who cannot afford anything other than a cycle it would be environment and health friendly ! Ok I know am asking for too much. But clean streets ? Clean sidewalks ?

Sometimes I think the filthy cities and streets reflect the filth in our hearts and minds – those who litter, truly have no care for the other. Gandhiji said Cleanliness is next to Godliness – can we atleast clean up our streets and public places ? Maybe slowly that will help clean the large scale, all encompassing corruption… Probably that’s why the Mahatma insisted on cleanliness :):) no am not going further onto safety !