Swachh Bharat: A Dream or Reality

Room No. 3, Advaitananda Bhavana, Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya, Narendrapur, 1991: Gifted a broom by one of the hostel seniors to clean it in 10 minutes. No, it was not ragging. it was my first brush with what people call Swachh Bharat Abhiyan nowadays.

Charity begins at home. So cleanliness should also begin at home. Yes that was the mantra we learnt when I was in the first year of my long hostel life in school. And, learning came with reward also. Every Sunday night, the "best room" award used to be announced in which the roommates of the best clean room were given a lozenge each. 

Besides the "best room" contest, we also shared our duties every week to keep our campus clean. I vividly remember one of our friends, the son of a wealthy businessman of the city then, was given the duty of surrounding cleaning. As the tell-tale name suggests, the boy — with long broom in hand like what we see celebrities use for photo-ops these days — was supposed to clean the hostel surroundings along with five of his friends. He was not very keen and our warden just used the broomstick on the kid's back several times to make cleanliness, and responsibility, a habit! Such was our grooming unlike millions of Indians outside the 15ft wall around us. 

Department of English and Other Modern European Languages, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, March 10, 2000: We took up brooms as our collective responsibility towards cleaning the department. It has been a decades-old tradition in Santiniketan when its founder Rabindranath Tagore began cleaning the ashram in honour of none other than Mahatma Gandhi, who was a visitor to Gurudev's abode of peace. Even today, ashramites gather in their respective places for a mass cleaning exercise on March 10, christened "Gandhi Punyah" by Tagore himself.

Gandhi's influence on people — from Tagore to Narendra Modi — seems immense so far as cleanliness is concerned. Even 10 years ago, I saw several posters on railway stations with Gandhi's message: Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Nowadays, even railway officials hardly try to pass on this message to either the passengers or the junior officers. Time has changed but not the indiscipline attitude of people towards cleaning their surroundings. Which "ness" is to be blamed for that — awareness, laziness, carelessness, callousness, fearlessness of law or obliviousness to our values?

I feel angry to watch people spit on the streets and litter around roads. Do they behave at home like this? Do we need a Prime Minister to cane around us to teach us about cleanliness? Do we need a Bharat Ratna cricketer to record a video of broom in hand to teach us what cleanliness is all about? 
Most probably, yes. 

Cricket, and beyond

"Eat cricket, sleep cricket" — a slogan once popularised by a cola MNC still reverberates from the Valley to the Ocean. Like many an acquired stuff from our colonisers, we have "inherited" the game, we have reinvented the game with its shortest form, an annual money-spinning exercise. I've nothing against it. It's a game millions love to watch, we bask in the glory of our champs on the field. We cheer for them. We cry for them. We seldom cry for Sukhen Dey, or Rituparna Das, or Shreyasi Singh, or Amarjit Nagi, or Nilesh Shinde. The list is endless.

No, they are not from Mars. We, the cricket-fed crowd, have hardly thought existence of any other sporting activity other than the 22-yard summer masaala matches. Yes, i'm talking about IPL. We claim that cricket is in our DNA. Yet, we hardly bother to watch men in white. Blue is the colour. Ranji? What's that? Test? That boring one? Who has the time to watch a Test match? But we like football — one of the highest viewership of Fifa World Cup 2014 was from India. Population, not passion, is the reason.

Who wants to play football? Body-contact game. Don't even go for that. Play Fifa 14 on iPad instead. Yes, the parents — the concerned ones. But what do they do after school? Tuition. Else, learn something fruitful that may make you a billionaire like Sachin. But why not Schumacher? No, who wants to die so fast? But he hasn't died yet. The risk is there. So many speeding cars on the road. But you have bought him a motorcycle? Oh! That's for his tuition and cricket coaching. Then, why doesn't he get training for Moto GP? Training for what? Moto GP, where Mahindra has been the first Indian team to take part in 2011. 

Sporting activities, especially the outdoor ones, are on extinction among the youngsters. It's certainly not a good sign. Do we have interest in hockey? Who is the Team India hockey captain? Would be "some Singh". Who is Nilesh Shinde? I don't know. He's the captain of Bengal Warriors. What's that buddy? It's a team in Pro Kabaddi. Yes, i saw SRK, Big B and Aamir's picture the other day at some kabaddi match. Yes, we need the glam factor. We've seen this in cricket, sorry in IPL. 

One of my friends told me a couple of months ago when we thought of organising an anti-cancer cycle rally that to make it a success we need a celebrity. Finding a celebrity to talk against smoking, or cancer, is like searching a footballer from Shivaji Park. Moreover, who is interested in cycling? Two wheels only. Out in the open. No AC (!). And, you consider it as a sports? Why not, have you watched Tour de France ever, maybe on TV? No, we went to France on a 19-day European tour, but that Tour de France was not included in the itinerary; should i call up the travel agent for skipping that?

Simply, we don't know anything other than what the politicians, celebs and media feed us. We never wanted to know beyond that. We just love to be what we are: checking inbox, typing texts, waiting for the video to buffer, changing handsets, downloading movies, and what not! Physical activities are confined only to moving the brain tissues. And, sporting activities can stay on the small screen in the drawing room.