We spent this weekend in Dharamsala, home-in-exile to the Dalai Lama, political and spiritual leader of Tibet. Actually, we stayed in McLeod Ganj, a town just a few kilometres from Dharamsala. McLeod Ganj is a tourist town and frankly we weren’t that crazy about it, but I think I’ll write about that some other time. To escape the beggars and con-artists who roam the McLeod Ganj streets aplenty, and to take advantage of our being away from the dirty city and close to nature, we decided to take a taxi up to a lookout point in the hills a few kilometres outside of town. This was without a doubt the most dangerous taxi ride I have ever taken.
Mechanised Death
To start with, upon attempting to depart from the town’s central square, the minibus cum taxi wouldn’t start. Based on the noises I was hearing from under the dash I suspected something was shorting out under there. The driver asked us to wait for a minute and went into a shop, returning with a plastic bottle containing what I thought looked like orange soda. He jammed the bottle under the dashboard just in front of me and in approximately the same place the shorting sound was coming from. After a good bit of tinkering and messing around in the back of the vehicle, the starter did begin to crank but the engine didn’t turn over. It was then that Señor Shitforbrains pulled out his bottle from under the dash and used the petrol inside to top-up the tank.
The ride to the top was no less dangerous with our top-heavy minivan straining to crawl over the giant boulders that made up the “road”, precipitous hundred meter drops to our right along the single-lane track. In fact, the trip up was so daunting (I can say that I did get quite a bit closer to God on my visit to Dharamsala) that neither I nor Mrs. WMG were willing to make the trip down in 
the death-mobile. We paid the driver the round-trip fare for his trouble and decided to walk back to town.
On our way down, we decided to stay off the road, on which like all roads in India the only thing more dangerous than driving is being a pedestrian. As we turned down a path that we thought might head in the direction of town, we asked a gentleman laying in the sun and reading a book whether he thought the path lead to McLeod Ganj. As he slowly rolled over to look me in the eye, his thick long shocking-blonde hair neatly combed, he answered, “probably”.
Lynn
The man turned out to be named Lynn, he was from California and was about 60ish, he told us he’d never used the Internet and didn’t own a TV. He had been in India since January, about the same time as us, and was headed home in the next couple of weeks. As you do, I asked Lynn how he liked it here. “Oh, I hate India”, he said putting his book down, leaning back on his elbow and looking up at me. “This isn’t India up here, haven’t you noticed? I like it here, but I can’t stand the rest of the place, it’s a pig sty.” He continued, “People just throw their trash everywhere, the cities are horrible.” Trying to keep the conversation upbeat I offered that perhaps as the middle class grows, a critical mass of people will care enough to change this. Lynn shook his head and rubbed his scraggly beard, “It’s not like this in Pakistan”, he said. “I was there for three weeks and I never saw anything as bad as it is here.”
Lynn was right of course, Indians treat this country like a big rubbish bin, dumping trash down embankments, pitching it from car windows, dropping it wherever they create it whether it’s on the street, in a park or on a nature trail. At the top of the hill where we were resting following our taxi ride from hell, a group of 5 young guys who had just hiked the 7 kilometres from a town on the other side of the mountain sat beside us. When they got up to hike home, they left two empty crisp bags and a plastic coke bottle laying on the green 
hillside overlooking the picturesque valley. As Mrs. WMG cleaned up behind them so we could take a picture of the place the way we would like to remember it, a little boy standing with his parents ripped open another crisp bag, tossing the top bit on the ground in front of him.
My hope is that what I told Lynn is true, that India is a little like the US of the 50’s or early 60’s. Then, it wasn’t uncommon to throw your burger wrapper or used coke bottle or cigarette butt out the window of your car as you zoomed through the forest or across the plain in your Corvair or your dad’s Impala. I remember that famous commercial of the American Indian standing and crying as he saw the rubbish strewn about the beautiful countryside. That TV commercial was part of a slow process of Americans educating themselves about the environment and caring about the way their streets, highways, vacant lots and open spaces looked. It’s still not perfect (go to Sweden if you want to see an example of that) but it’s now a lot better. Maybe, just maybe this up-and-coming Indian generation will care enough about the environment they live in to not tolerate it being used as a sewer.
[...] Shamrin blogs about his weekend in Dharamsala. En route he asks directions from Lynn, a Californian, and strikes up a conversation with him. “Oh, I hate India”, he said putting his book down, leaning back on his elbow and looking up at me. “This isn’t India up here, haven’t you noticed? I like it here, but I can’t stand the rest of the place, it’s a pig sty.” He continued, “People just throw their trash everywhere, the cities are horrible.” Trying to keep the conversation upbeat I offered that perhaps as the middle class grows, a critical mass of people will care enough to change this. Lynn shook his head and rubbed his scraggly beard, “It’s not like this in Pakistan”, he said. “I was there for three weeks and I never saw anything as bad as it is here.” Linked by BA. Join Blogbharti facebook group. Do you know you can follow Blogbharti in Facebook? [...]
exactly..it is really sad..i dont know when we start to realise that we are spoiling our own country in this mad rush..
—My hope is that what I told Lynn is true, that India is a little like the US of the 50’s or early 60’s.—
Definitely – but Times 1 Billion Plus! The whole process is accelerated. Plus, in the US we passed laws and enforced them. Things will have to change radically in Indian society for that to work here.
I had hopes when I saw a Gaddi shopkeeper cuss-out some Punjabis who threw garbage in the waterfall. Maybe, I thought, the litterers will respond to local peer pressure.
hi,
This certainly is a true picture of Dharamshala. As I come from the city, I feel sorry to read this article. Wish we could do something about it. I publish a blog on Himachal Pradesh with few friends. Would love to publish your article on our site. Please let us know if it is ok with you.
with regards
Varun
Thanks all of you for your comments here, this entry has attracted a lot of attention and I hope that means it strikes a nerve in a positive way.
Sirensongs: You are right, there are some underlying societal norms that will have to change here in order for this to work the same as it has in the West. Putting up a “No Littering” sign on a highway where drivers routinely drive the wrong way up the road is unlikely to have much impact. But if individuals start to make it clear to others that it’s not OK when they simply discard their rubbish in the streets or the nature trails or wherever, maybe that peer pressure will have an impact. Who will tell cities to stop shovelling their waste down open ravines as we saw in the hills of Kerala, I don’t know.
Varun: You are welcome to publish or link to this article in any way you would like.
Rules achieve nothing except instill fear by way of punishments, and it is only until one actually begins to appreciate the aesthetics of their surroundings and in turn allow themselves to be pleased by it they’ll continue to pitch stuff into the countryside.
I think you’re quite right about that Anil. I don’t know anyone who has actually ever been fined for littering, people don’t do it because it is socially unacceptable. However, enforcement of an anti-dumping law would be entirely appropriate here. (Speaking of enforcing anti-dumping laws, there is a really really great and funny song about this exact topic by Arlo Guthrie called “Alice’s Restaurant”)
I agree with you. Mass public campaigns are needed to educate people. Those who won’t tolerate dirt need to be more vocal.
In a Bangalore local store a few days back, I saw a young couple, their child perhaps 4 years old. The lady wanted an ice-cream and the husband obliged. As they were exiting the store, they passed by a dustbin. The lady, meanwhile, opened up the ice-cream and threw the wrapper on the floor. I was outraged at this. I went to the man and told him that her lady could do well to use the bin alongside. He looked at me top to bottom and then bent down, took the wrapper and put it in the bin. But the look on his face did not show any trace of guilt. And that was something that told me that the objective, in real, had not been achieved.
I see incidents like these all the time and I feel sad about the fact that Indians do not feel socially irresponsible. I wonder if anything can be done to prevent this.
I live in Goa and the city is way, way cleaner than the rest of the country. Laws do something but not everything. Ultimately, it comes down to people. Your comment that India, right now, looks like what US was in the 50s gives me hope but then again, we will have to do something radically different to reach there.
Look, I truly do not mean to slur Indians, but even the Air India flight I took back from Delhi to London was littered with trash all over the floor by the end of the flight. And the bathrooms, which were relatively clean at the beginning of the flight, were in hurrendous shape by the end. And this is why foreigners, almost as a matter of course, get very ill when they visit India.
Indians treat their Mother India as if it were a toilet. Shameful.
Hi Mike, thanks for you comments. They bring three things to mind. 1) Don’t fly Air India it has a bit of a reputation 2) our (westerners) response to the litter (and often filth) we see in India is a learned one. We’ve been taught what an “acceptable” standard is for cleanliness, we have not come by it naturally and 3) the idea of it being important how you leave a place for someone else who comes after you, whether it be a mountain trail, a city street or an airplane loo, is also a learned behaviour.
Very Intresting and true articles about India.
The unger generation is becoming aware but as some one said its cultural block “Indians do not feel socially irresponsible”
Only when u stay out of India and” think about it ” here just staying out of India does not change the person I have seen lots of overseas Indians doing the same thing like other Indians when they are in India.
I tell u why …In india there is soemting call as support system.The British Invented Servant System.When they r in India they become so much used to this that they do not want to pick and thorw their own durt in the bin.They literally become ashamed about it.
and the owner (me) is gardening 
.
Like this time when I was in India and in pune and watering my own garden people were looking at me….coz all the other houses have gardeners
I stay in sydney presently this is the state of affairs. You need to even understand the Indian culture which is preventing things happening in the right way.
Well india is now big cricket money minter they should do the ADs in such place to make the people aware of Incredible India and how to make it Incredible and clean india !!!
Thanks!,