Operation Clean Sangam.
Sangam, literally translated means “join”. The Sangam I am referring to here is a place around 100 KM South of Bangalore, in the Kanakapura direction. It is called Sangam because it is the natural meeting point of two great rivers, one Kaveri and the other Arkavathy. Their union makes up a very picturesque and volatile site which is a treat to the eyes and mind of the beholder. The sheer power of the vast expanses of flowing water makes you wonder if man really as powerful as he sees himself.
The purpose of our visit was not to enjoy the beauty of this place, on the contrary we were here looking for the things that diminish its beauty and to clean them. We were here to perform a Plastic Surgery, though of a different kind, it was to remove all plastic materials like water bottles, cold drink bottles, ghutka Packets, cigarette packs, plastic cups, plastic wrappers, plastic covers…etc…It was organized by a group called Clean n Green., which adopts certain places and has taken up to clean up the places.
The place has lots of Hillocks which are separated by the flowing rivers, the most famous of these is the one which leads to MekeDattu around 4 KM from Sangam. People who come to visit MekeDattu have to essentially pass through Sangam. We had to take Coracles to move from the mainland to these hillock. The boatmen ferried us across with relative ease. The ride at water level, where you can literally smell the purity of water, coming from the natural source, without any artificiality of chemicals like chlorine that we are so used to, this by itself is enough to enthuse you with the energy required for the task ahead.
It was decided that we would be cleaning up only the Sangam portion of the location, since a team of noble souls had cleaned up MekeDattu a week back and we felt it would not be very productive to clean up the same location.
The “we” here refers to a bunch of 16 individuals(foto attached) who came from varied background, the only thing common between us was the determination to see the place cleaned up. Some of them had been on this expedition before but most of us were “freshers”.
Once our feet were firmly set on the ground, there was a small briefing in which we were told what to clean up, which translates to any junk(hence forth refered to as treasure) lying around. With the hands protected by plastic gloves(of course we remembered to throw it into the garbage bags in the end) , garbage bags in hand and armed with a stick with a hook in the end, we spread out in different directions and began the Operation.
It was quite an educating experience. I came to know about so many new brands of ghutka, new liquor brands(we infact found out which is the most favoured brand, not mentioning it here since it would be free publicity), new cigarette brands, I learned that AquaFina was not the only brand which supplied packaged water. I learned about new creative ways of throwing junk into the least accessible of locations, I learned that the best way to dispose off liquor bottles was to smash it against stones(I wonder how many of them would have the guts to smash a filled up bottle, or probably this feeling rises from the fact that they are themselves filled up with the content of the bottle…or could it be due to the frustration that there is no more of it left it in the bottle and the poor bottle is not able to produce more of it, think it would and interesting topic for a doctorate…).
In some places, where people had camped, it looked as if they had ghutka for they breakfast, lunch and dinner, so many packets lying around. The place was littered to the core, anywhere you turn you could find treasure, but the place was not beyond salvage.
Around 2 hours into the operation we hit a small snag, we had run out of garbage bags. Timely intervention by a couple of resourceful people in the group resulted in getting two huge sacks, we emptied the contents of the smaller bags into the big sack and started re-using them for collecting more treasure. We used this time to construct a structure using the glass bottles, which was destroyed by a naturally calamity(gust of wind).
Two more hours, eight more bags of treasure later we were completely stocked and no more collection was possible. It was time for some French wine-yard style crushing of plastic bottles and time for some photographs. The whole collection was around 70-80 Kgs(excluding the bottles), That amount of treasure in an area of around 3 square miles should give you an idea of how much of littering was done, considering the fact that the contents were light plastic materials.
We never made it to MekeDattu, but that was not a disappointment, it was more of contentment for leaving Sangam a better place. Satisfaction that another week did not pass staring into the computer screen. There was a contentment for a job well done as well as having done something and not just sit and crib about it(typical Kuch Nahin Ho Sakta Is Desh Ka).
The question is, who does this littering? Easy answer: "these illiterate guys, coming from the low background, they do it. Nothing can be done about them, they just throw stuff where ever they can".Easy answers are necessarily not the correct answers, few of the brands of liquor bottles I mentioned, they cost a fortune, I don’t think the guys we first blame would even bother to buy a branded bottle of water costing 20 bucks. NO, this guy is not going to rent a taxi and come so far and litter this place. So the question still remains to be answered and your guess is as good as mine.
Is this the end then? The answer is a big NO!!!! for it would be an understatement to say that this was the tip of the iceberg. There is more land to be covered, more treasure to be discovered, more plastic surgery to be done. To make sure when people go back after visiting this place, they remember the beauty of this place and not the sore points.
Thanks to organization like Clean n Green, groups like save nature (http://save-nature.blogspot.com/) which have been doing this for some time, an initiative has been taken, though more work needs to be done in terms of installing proper collection and disposal system and educating everyone, including the so called educated, to keep the place clean.
NB: In case any of you would like to volunteer for the same you can refer to: http://save-nature.blogspot.com/ . Satisfaction fully guaranteed.
