It was raining. The litter rested upon the rubble.

I started my blog last night but somehow lost the file. So now I begin again. The rain is beating against the window as Monsoon continues to batter Andhra Pradesh. Good for the farmers of the area, but it will hamper the object of this post from migrating. Last night I experienced a very fitful sleep. My night was filled with dreams containing a menagerie of people from my childhood and young adulthood. Their significance came to me in my dreams in the form of a warped musical from 1942. George M. Cohen conducted the spectral orchestra and there I was, singing “I’m a Whackadoodle Dandy”. Yep. All those people who were in my dreams contributed, each in his or her whack way, to my world view. Scary, to say the least.
But enough about me. It’s all about the litter. If you recall the rubble post, I purposefully glossed over the litter part of the story because there’s a certain juxtaposition that centers on the litter itself and the attitudes toward litter. First, litter is ubiquitous. It serves its purpose of sustenance to the feral dogs, sacred cows, Rickie’s entire family, and all the children and women in the shanty towns. I believe I heard a local saying “one person’s litter is another person’s as well”. Or something like that.
But the juxtaposition comes from the legions of women who sweep the streets with bundles of sticks lashed together with rags that probably do duty as tent lashings and dish rags as well. You will see them early in the morning by the side of the road making gentle sweeping motions from the road to the dirt shoulder. I have yet to actually see any litter being moved from the street to side. I believe most of the litters’ movements from their original drop point to where ever you see it are part of a grand design as the litter takes on some cosmic animation. Now one element of the refuse you don't see is cow manure. You can assume that most of the cows wandering the streets are not field broken. However, when dried, the manure becomes an acceptable fuel in the shanty towns. Mmmmm, those dosas really have a unique aroma to them tonight. Come on, tell me, you broke into the water buffalo dung, didn't you? I feel so special.
Now large litter deposits are not unusual as we used to experience in the annual migration of litter from their winter rookeries alongside I-75 and I-94 as the freeways wound their way through Detroit. Each spring, as the blackened winter snows began to melt, you could see the immature litter poking through the disgustingly receding piles. At this initial exposure, the immature litter would not be able to migrate as it was sodden by the melting slurry of water, brake dust, grit, and grime. As the winds of March started flowing from the south, the drying process allowed the litter to begin their trek north before any of the weeds were long enough to capture the slower litter, holding them fast, eventually shredding them into fine pulp on the shards of broken glass. This mat of shredded litter insured that the next generation of roadside weeds were the strongest and ugliest possible. This was another example of the symbiotic relationship and survival of the fittest. I’m surprised a naturalist like David Attenborough never did a series on this process. You can imagine him lying on the steep grade of the overpasses where I-75 and I-94 intersect in the now misnomer of the New Center area. David, in hushed voice, narrates his observations as he watches the strongest, fastest litter beginning to wing their way up the I-75 trench toward the 8 Mile Road border where some litter would stop in Ferndale or turn east on 8 Mile until they would continue north into Warren. Only the strongest litter would continue its journey ever northward where they could be seen by late June in Flint swirling about the weed-choked parking lot of the shuttered Auto World.
I spoke about the attitude toward litter. In the US, we have been working since the early 1960s to stem the tide of litter which was kicked off with the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign featuring Iron Eyes Cody as the “crying Indian”. I find no crying Indians in Hyderabad. In fact, I was shocked that regardless of class, adding to the litter level appears to be within an acceptable dharma for all Indians.
Must stop for now. But remember the name Don. The name was one of the visitors to my dreams last night. Looking back on this particular person, eccentric really doesn’t come close to doing justice to the man.