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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  An open letter to the manly monsoon hiker
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An open letter to the manly monsoon hiker

Dear MCPs, why not take the bottles and plastic bags and gutkas pan packets and cigarette containers back with you? Startle the womenfolk; clean up after yourself

Machismo and messiness go together in the hills. Photo: Charlie Loram/Getty ImagesPremium
Machismo and messiness go together in the hills. Photo: Charlie Loram/Getty Images

Dear Men in Cargo Pants (MCPs),

Stop! Wait! Pick it up! I saw you last week, several groups of you, panting but determined as you climbed up the ghat to the peak of Bhimashankar. You had rucksacks on your backs, you’d left the women at home to go out for a monsoon hike to the temple on the peak, and you were all in a great mood despite your sweaty brows and armpits.

It is beautiful, isn’t it, that pathway? I’ve climbed it a number of times since I was young, and my favourite part is the sacred forest. Over the years I’ve seen a giant red squirrel, a trogon, monkeys, and of course, many sparkling waterfalls. The ancient trees explode into a dazzling kaleidoscope in transient, sun-dappled moments in the midst of symphonic downpours. There’s a particular drama to a monsoon downpour in a Maharashtra forest, and we Maharashtrians all turn into excited children when we experience it. And of course, since you’re hiking up to pay your respects at the temple, you worship the forest for more than its incredible beauty and biodiversity.

So what’s up with the Balaji Wafers wrappers? And the broken beer bottles? Is this some new, modern form of prasad?

What do you think happens to the rubbish you leave on the path? Dear MCPs, do you think at all, or do you just toss them without a thought? The Balaji tomato wafers are my favourite, but I hate the sight of those orange bags in the oddest places. Like the sacred forest of Bhimashankar. Or the road through this valley in the Western Ghats. Or around the sign that says, “N/A Plots available. Good appreciation. Eco-sensitive, pollution-free atmosphere." So eco-sensitive that it has tulips on the signboard (in Maharashtra?); so pollution-free that it is surrounded by garbage. That particular hillside used to have trees and a rare ground orchid growing on it, until it was bulldozed by some other MCPs who didn’t really own it but didn’t let that stop them.

I’m sure all your flats in Mumbai are very clean. Do you pick up your own rubbish there, I wonder, or does someone do it for you? Now, as you walk in packs through the forest and appreciate nature’s beauties, and perhaps pause to reflect upon life, could you spare a moment to reflect upon the possible deeper meanings of tossing that plastic Bisleri bottle against that mango tree you just passed? Or, if you’re having a particularly jolly time, that glass Kingfisher bottle?

The plastic bottle’s going to stay around for a long time. It will remain long after you and I are dust, bone and ashes. Soon enough these pristine paths will become so littered that they will spawn a whole new industry: ragpickers will come through to collect the bottles and make a buck. Piles will grow by the path. And maybe on next year’s hike you’ll see those instead of silver fern and begonias. And maybe the Malabar Whistling Thrush will sing its glorious song elsewhere. It only nests near clean waterfalls. And maybe the rare Uropeltis macropelis, a snake that lives only in Maharashtra, won’t move gracefully through the forest floor any more. Hey, might as well go for a walk in the city.

The beer bottle that you flung with joyous abandon has shattered into hundreds of pieces. Here comes the rain, rattling the mango and teak leaves, creating musical little streams for you to wade through and wash off the mud on your high-tech shoes. Those streams will wash down snails, rich fertile mud, leaves, and pieces of beer bottle. Next week when Sunita from Khandas village goes into her field to transplant her rice, she might let out a yelp of pain when a particularly jagged piece slices into her foot. A few years ago, the biggest danger in the fields was snakebite. Now infected cuts via beer bottles have added an extra element of danger to farmers’ lives.

Last year an MCP from Mumbai bought some land in this valley. He comes for weekends, sometimes with some women and children, sometimes with a couple of other guys. They got into the habit of throwing their garbage just across the road outside their gate. One day, walking by, I saw him and went in. “I’m sure you’re not aware of this, but your people throw your garbage over there when you leave" (I’m not diplomatic enough to politely ignore it, but I am willing to pretend that he’s not directly to blame). He was most startled.

“Is it your land?" he wanted to know. Not belligerently, just genuinely curious about why I would care about rubbish by the side of the road.

“No," I said. “But it’s someone’s land. Or government land. I don’t know. But it’s not the place for kachra."

“Accha," he said, and since then we haven’t seen his trash there. I find this pleasing but baffling. It’s easier for me to believe that he had malign intent than that it just never occurred to him that there’s something wrong with throwing your rubbish wherever you like.

Maybe it means there’s hope. Maybe it’s just carelessness, and not downright venality, which leads to the carloads of picnickers (most are MCPs, but there are some Women in Cargo Pants as well) tossing stuff out of their windows And to the general attitude that our forests and villages are as disposable as those orange bags of yummy tomato wafers.

Dear MCPs, why not take the bottles and plastic bags and gutka packets and cigarette containers back with you? Startle the womenfolk; clean up after yourself. What better way to pay your respects to Bhimashankar?

Sohaila Abdulali is a New York-based writer. She writes a fortnightly column on women in the 21st century.

Also Read | Sohaila’s previous Lounge columns

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Published: 23 Aug 2014, 12:29 AM IST
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