Clean Darjeeling & We The People

 

We are proud people, proud of our multi-cultural heritage, proud of our foods (esp. gundruk, momo and bhola ko alu), proud of our inter-religious customs, traditions, cultures, proud of many other things, but most of all we are proud of our place Darjeeling, the queen of hills. No matter where we go and where we are, we never tire from mentioning how beautiful our place is and when we describe our place to outsiders (tourists, friends) we talk about sunrise from Tiger Hill…. Kanchenjunga from Sandakpu/ Batasia…… boating at Mirik ….. Gangamaya….. Rock Garden…and all the beautiful places that we can think of…. But unless absolutely necessary, we avoid talking about Chowk Bazaar…. Orient ko Ukalo… Bich Galli… don’t you wonder why??? Do we ever mention old super market as a must visit place??? Or have you ever suggested anyone to visit Judge Bazaar???? As far as I am concerned ‘NO’, I never dared such a sacrilege….and I bet same is true for most of you.

Aren’t you wondering, “Kura ta thikai ho….. Why do we do that??? ” it’s because, for most of us, ignoring something is the best way out. In fact we are very good at ignoring things and shrinking away from our responsibilities, and often our line of thought is, “Well! It does not bother or concern me alone, why should I do anything about it?” Another line of thought would be “it’s not my responsibility…. I pay the taxes…Why is the government not doing anything about it??” But think once, even if we ignore the problem, does it cease to exist??? Will Darjeeling cease to be filthy, if we don’t mention the filth????

Pointing fingers and shifting responsibilities is turning out to be a national sport for India in general and Darjeeling in particular, however unlike other parts of India, we do not have the privilege of letting situations run their course, and wait for the outcome. There are many reasons why I say this, the basic being; no one cares about our future, absolutely no one, the central and state governments don’t have any incentive to take an interest in our affairs and our politicians are either too self-centered or ignorant to be concerned about what’s happening around them or too timid to do anything about it. Another reason is we don’t have any other place to go; we will not be welcome in any other place if we have to leave Darjeeling for any reason what so ever.

The politicians are not the only ones to be blamed; even we the common people are equally guilty. It can be seen from the fact that our responses to most of the civic/social problems are “Ach! hamro manchey hundai na ho bro, kurai bujdaina” or “tyo hamro problem haina bro” or “tyo bhai halcha” or “A bittha ko, jatti gare pani kehi hundaina” etc. We shrug our shoulders and move on with our life, and this is where we go wrong. We fail to realize that it’s ours and ours only problem, it does not bother any one else, it was not created by others, and others are not going to loose anything. So the responsibility of seeing to it that Darjeeling is clean is ours….. Besides this, what right do we have to blame Mr. Pranay Rai or the Municipality for not living up to their promise of making Chowrasta clean, when we all know that we have not done anything to see that it remains clean. ??? How many of us use the dustbins to throw our cigarette or tobacco packs???? We can demand change, only when we ourselves are ready to change for better.

Hence, it’s high time we start thinking about it, and the right way to do it is start talking about this issue at all possible places, be it school, college, home, village, or Chowrasta….. Wherever you can just talk about it, bring out the issue…. make people think …. That’s the start…. Rest will follow.

Together we can and we will bring about a change, and contribute in making Darjeeling a better place in coming days. My salutations to Darjeeling Carnival Group, Sanjeevani CT scan project group, to people living in TN ROAD and Jawahar Busty area (for repairing the road from Chowrasta to Toongsong)… to the people living in Manpari busty (for making Chowrasta ko toilet clean once again)…. and to all groups and people who have initiated projects, programmes just because there was no one else to do it. The lessons to be learned from all of the above mentioned initiatives is that we can really bring about a change if we want to, all we need to do is work together, include everyone, contribute any way we can …. thoughts, money, action … and what more ….. doing something together not only helps in getting the job done quickly but also helps in bonding the community together.

Yes!!! We can make Darjeeling as clean as any other place in the world, a clean Darjeeling is not a distant dream, it’s a realistic, achievable goal, but for that we need to act together, and work as a team, and be willing to change habits or rather ourselves.

Lastly, before I leave I would like to share the immortal lines by O S Marden “There are powers inside of you, which, if you could discover and use, would make of you everything you ever dreamed or imagined you could become…..”