Pictures of Trash

I laughed as I looked at my pictures from the trip; I'd taken quite a few pictures of...well...trash. Interestingly, though, these pictures are sort of integral to understanding what it was like to be there. There is and was trash pretty much everywhere.

There is certainly not the taboo on littering that we see in the states. In fact, the concept of littering is a foreign one for the Indians we encountered. We constantly saw people dropping trash right where they stood. What's humbling is to realize that many live off of this trash...dogs, livestock and yes, people.

In the airport, I was trying to throw something away, but couldn't find a trash can (no surprise, they don't really have public-use trashcans). A man who worked there figured out what I was doing and indicated to me that I should just throw it on the ground. In the airport. That should have been my first hint at what was to come. I couldn't quite bring myself to just throw it on the ground. But, at his urging, I did finally put it on a chair with some other trash. I have no idea when/if it would get cleaned up. Such was the way of life there.

One person in our group commented that the streets of Chennai looked like they were war-torn. It was true; the street sides and places where curbs may have once been did in many places look like they were remnants of a city that had been bombed. Some things can never be truly captured or seen through the lens of a camera, but I hope these have helped convey a little of it. Imagine living in this place, day in and day out. There was difference between the "nice" areas and the other areas. This type of garbage-strewn landscape was truly all over.