Cleanliness is Godliness

Imagine yourself walking down a road, and you see a white piece of cloth on the way. What will be your first reaction? You will get cautious and try not to stomp on sheet. Why because that sheet is so clean and you wouldn’t want to spoil it.

Now imagine the same walk, the same road, but in place of clean white sheet, there’s a dirty rug. Your first reaction? There wouldn’t be any, you will perhaps not even notice.

That’s what I will try to advocate here : If an area is clean, people would like to keep it clean, if something is dirty, it will get dirtier. So keep the surroundings clean.

Let me try to support the cause with my personal examples too.
Consider Noida vegetable Market. One fine Tuesday, I was jogging back from noida stadium to office gym, listening to that title track of movie swades. And here goes the clash of my 2 senses. My ears were listening something and eyes were seeing something else or perhaps my nose too. Song goes – ‘the fragrance of your motherland soil, how will you forget this’ there was no fragrance in the first place! It was awfully pathetic smell of the spoiled vegetable and fruit remains of the previous night, which brought me almost close to puke. So I wouldn’t really want to remember the odor of the soil. And after that foul smell, I tend to at least spit out, if not puke, which makes the road even dirtier, there goes the point I started with. Hence we should keep the surroundings clean.

That also reminds me of a small kid I saw at the IGI airport when I was landed from Vienna . That kid was telling his mom, “mom I can smell the scent of India” of course in a positive tone.

Dogs keep their place clean before sitting. If we keep only our homes clean, there wouldn’t difference b/w us and dogs. So we should do more than that, keep the street clean, then neighborhood, then surrounding areas, cities, states and the entire country. First thing that someone notices when he comes to a city for the first time is the cleanliness. All other things – public transport, warmth of people are seen later. Anyways eyes start their action earlier than any other sense. So tourists from abroad and from other cities will be happy to visit Delhi again if they find it clean. I remember a young woman on ND railway station walking around 500m to a dustbin to throw her cigarette butt. Of course those were ramodass;s days when smoking in public was banned. But the point is, if she can care for cleanliness of a place, which is not even hers. Why can’t we care even more for our place?

I am talking of sanitation; because that’s the easiest way of contributing to society and country without spend the costly resource of time or money. We should simply stop throwing litter- which includes ice cream cups, groundnuts shell, wrappers of toffees, chocolates and other edibles., keep them in pocket or in hand, and throw them in dustbin on road if there’s any or in the trash bag at home. Simple.

Priests say god resides in hearts of pious people. Well I say, Ram resides in cleaner homes and societies. No wonder we clean our houses to please goddess Lakshmi on Diwali. I will suggest please please her 24*7*365, not just on Diwali. And goddess will come by road to your home. So please keep that road clean too. To sum up, Gandhiji’s mantra – “Cleanliness is godliness.”