Great Indian Litterbug: The Story of the Estate Mothalali

                    He was known as the 'Estate Mothalali'.For a short,bald man with an unusual pout,'Mothalali' had a rather awkward gait.He used to visit our colony every week.No one knew his real name ,but everyone was well aware that he was the legitimate owner of the twenty five cents of (plain) un-used land which was situated in the heart of Gandhi Nagar-the residential colony of state government servants.Being the inhabitants of the colony named after the father of the nation,each one of us (read Gandhi Nagar nivasis)had that inherent unfailing,,burning desire to stick to the teachings and principles of Bappuji.Obviously,in that pre-Aaap,'Swach Bharat' era,we had no one else to look up to.

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                     As all of you know,Cleanliness has always been an  important part of Gandhigiri.Obviously,we,Gandhi Nagar nivasis knew it very well.That was why each one of us took great pains to maintain our houses and compounds in the cleanest manner possible.All the litter,right from food waste to paper wastes and polythene bags were promptly chucked out of our compounds as swiftly as possible.But,it was the estate mothalalis land which used to bear the brunt of our highly efficient cleanliness drive,most of the time.Given the lifeless,inanimate state  it was in(thankfully),the land never used to show it's displeasure for having been made a dumpyard(not that we would have bothered!).In due course of time,discarding wastes in 'mothalalis' land became something like a moral right of Gandhi Nagar nivasis.Some even went a step ahead and claimed that they were doing a great 'favour' to mothalali by putting his otherwise,useless piece of land to good use.

                  As I had mentioned in the beginning of the post,'mothalali' used to visit his 'property' every week and what greeted him invariably during each of his visits was the unsighty appearance of garbage and litter.If he were lucky,the litter would comprise more of paper wastes and othe decayable stuff.But those small mercies were far and few.After each episode of surveillance,mothalali used to submit a neatly written complaint letter to the 'Gandhi Nagar Residents Association President'(Mr.Somu) alleging the lack of civic sense among the colony nivasis and the gross injustice being delivered to him and his precious piece of land by making it a dumpyard for the domestic wastes of residents.But the smart ass that he was,Somu quietly used to dispose off that letter too in mothalali's asset.Things were going quite fine for  us and it was then it happened-the arrival of ChikunGunya.

               Initially we thought that it was a  new exotic delicacy (something like the Chicken Shawarma) which had found it's place in the only Arabian restaurant in the locality(Kuboos Arabia).It was only when our colony physician Dr.Kothary(dude! he was an internal Medicine guy and not a sexologist as you thought just now!)made it clear that Chikungunya was a viral disease spread by mosquitoes and the epidemic outbreak might have been due to the stagnant water in mothalali's dumpyard that the alarm bell started ringing.In a short span of 15 days,32 nivasis of Gandhi Nagar were diagnosed to have ChikunGunya and everyone started panicking.Mr Somu,the president decided to play the messiah by giving a call to the local MLA who inturn threatened (not before leaking his future course of action to the local cable channel reporter)the Municipality  officials with dire consequences if the litter and garbage in Mothalali's land was not cleaned off as early as possible.

                Thanks to the legislator's threat,the cleaning yajna was completed by the Municipality in record time and Mothalali sold off his land a couple of weeks later.

This post is a part of Indi-blogger,'The Great Indian Litter' Campaign

-nikhimenon