Born to die in garbage stench

Mail News Service

Saraikela, Feb 18: At a juncture when the country is hell bent on the ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan,’ there is a species of human look-alikes who find survival ways in garbage dumps. Their lives and living find succor in garbage and discarded bric-a-brac thrown on streets and of course, in the vats that local administrations provide to implement the Swachh Bharat concept.

A little before the sun rises to usher in a new day and another shot at life, urchins and elders in tattered and soiled rags that go for covering their bony bodies with sacks thrown over their shoulders, scavenge for discarded food, plastic and liquor bottles, rags and other disposables in a bid to survive another sunset of life and stench.

They are at the job from dawn to dusk and after returning home or whatever hole, they dump their collection in their miserable accommodations and the entire family gets to sort out things that would be sold to scrap dealers. The money earned may or may not provide a paltry dinner but then, these human scavengers are used to go to sleep a few winks without dreams. The stench of rotting garbage is their lullaby for sleep.

Some of this breed of urchins in their quest for living may dig out a torn and tattered photo of a film star on a discarded wrapper and their dreams of a great life as an actor is instilled in their minds little knowing that such a world is not meant for them. They do not realize that their status is consigned to a breed of scum that has come and gone through stench riddled rubbles of unrecognized times.

Education is not written in their world of garbage but that does not matter. What matters is a piece of survival in a world of daily death. In their world, Boris Pasternak’s observation, ‘Man is born to live, not to prepare for life,’ is incongruous. It should read, in the cases of garbage pickers, ‘Scum are born to die a thousand or less deaths.’

This castigated tribe has survived the three COVID-19 phases without vaccines, masks and sanitizers; they have seen off summer, monsoon and winter in tattered clothes. There is no autumn  in their lives. They pull through death every day, but then, who cares.

No social organization has ever tried to bring brightness in the lives of these denizens in human form. Newspapers, magazines and electronic media scream aloud names of ever growing social organizations and NGOs providing meals, snacks, fruits, clothes and blankets among the needy. Their acts are recorded in photographs and eulogized in news columns. These groups have worked ‘relentlessly’ and have been dubbed Corona Warriors. But these organizations have never reached out a hand to this breed of anonymous mortals who survive in the darkness of poverty. The breed has learnt to survive in these ghastly environs. Perhaps, the guys and gals enjoy and prefer such ways for they are unacquainted with other options except a dynasty of odorous lives. People shun them, administrations do not care and social organizations are unaware of their existence.

Sadistically speaking, these trash pickers are better off fighting with dogs in a bid to retrieve a scrap of stale edible from the garbage pile. That is a part of abhorred generation.