In Our Filth

 When the soul, through its own fault... becomes rooted in a pool of pitch-black, evil smelling water, it produces nothing but misery and filth.  Saint Teresa of Avila

Compressed plastic and a bottle around a foraging Water Rail

In the wilds I was breathing fresh air... Or so I thought, till I saw the carelessly flung bottle. Going a bit further I saw the side of the path littered with bottles, wrappers and the detritus of modern, civilised living. The Great Indian Tourist had struck again. The remotest areas are littered, boards in any language do not deter those determined to create filth. I was in the Valley of Flowers, that pristine, clear mountain air, till I saw a jarring sign of the “great Indian tourist". The forest department had diverted  a mountain stream so that trekkers could fill water bottles, right next to this someone had left a big, bright blue bar of washing soap, slowly dissolving into the pristine stream. A little further on I saw the shine of silver foil discarded after someone’s breakfast, lying among the flowers. I also met the guide/owner of a very large agency specialising in VoF; he boasted of his 400 GB of photos and his undying love of the Valley, all the while playing loud music on a bluetooth speaker!  We are somehow hell-bent on destroying our environmental heritage.

 Dirty water flows past a Red-wattled Lapwing 

On my many walks in the mountains, the pristine beauty has been marred by litter.  The base to the Valley of Flowers and Hemkund hike is Ghangriya, where through years of unregulated dumping by tourists and pilgrims have resulted in mountains of refuse behind every homestay and hotel. This is particularly unfair to local fauna which have become used to looking in these mounds of rubbish for an easy meal and are fast losing the ability to forage. 

A pile of rags provides a Pond Heron a perch 

Once outside the bird sanctuary at Karnala,  at the monkey feeding point, I saw a well-heeled young couple and their kid in a car feeding the monkeys. At this place the highway is particularly lethal as monkeys expect a tidbit from each passing vehicle. So I requested the couple to not feed the monkeys as it was causing them to develop a deadly habit.  The guy in the car tells me, and he appeared to be educated, that how could it become a habit when he fed the monkeys only once a year.

A Black Kite sitting on a manhole by a dirty Nala as it waits patiently for a tit-bit

There is a nala near my house, and the water is filthy with chemicals purged by nearby industry, while the banks of the nala are a dumping place for garbage. Birds, insects and butterflies have no choice but to adapt to this dirt around them, they continue feeding on prey that is washed down the dirty water. I have seen Heron, Kingfishers, water birds and kites regularly here.

Slabs of compressed plastic are the resting place for these Lesser Whistling Ducks

On a hike in the Great Himalayan National Park, the guide was proud that his Valley was not producing hydro-electric power, but he was charging his phone and lighting his house as someone else was generating electricity. Everywhere I would go birds and animals would be struggling to live despite the pollution.

A black plastic bag and bits of plastic around a Purple Swamphen 

Our need for indestructible gratification has grown so rapidly and is so insatiable that we are on a path of self destruction. Very soon we will have no place to dump our garbage and civic services will simply give up. 

Seen it all, a Pond Heron yawns at the filthy nala

it is only a matter of time before we drown in our own filth, as it is another's problem, dump it as long it is not in my backyard.  So everyone is dumping in someone else's backyard. "Modern" living has generated so much filth that will not decay for centuries. As Vladimir Nabokov said "We who burrow in filth every day may be forgiven perhaps the one sin that ends all sins."