Clean up your closet.

So yesterday after Friday Prayers I was buying a packet of Prince Chocolate cookies from a General Store just below our office. Since I intended to eat there, I asked the shop keeper if he had a dust bin, what happened exactly? Here it is:

Me: “Do you have a dustbin”?

Him: After a few seconds of staring at me…..“Yes”.

Me: “It’s just that I need to throw this packet in it”

Him: “Just throw it anywhere you like, who cares”.

Me: “It does not look good, does it?”

Him:”Everybody here does it, so just go ahead”.

And so I threw the packet on the ground………………NOT. I put it in my jeans pocket and once I made it back into the office, I finally got rid of it just the way it should be done in a more civilized world (me being the exception) *Period*.

Mind you, that is not the only scenario I have been through. Last year (probably, I do not remember when exactly), I was at a bakery store looking to get a bottle of Pepsi. Before I would take it out of the freezer I had a packet of French Fries I had just eaten, and I needed to throw it away. Yes I went through the same process as described above and again I got stared at by him. Reluctantly and thankfully he took it from my hand and threw it (assumingly) where it should have gone according to the rules.

Although I do throw such stuff away just like a random Pakistan I would do but it does occur to me sometimes is that we have been talking about keeping our roads clean and all that stuff about trash disposal and bla bla bla. But isn’t it about time that we got onto the act? I know I sometimes try to do it but now I realize I will have to counter all the reluctant attitudes of others, simply because we got it going on the other way round here.

The overall attitude tells us that the only way we can get back on track is if we are forced to get back onto it. Because the whole “Do as you please” thing does open up all different kinds of doors for us (if you know what I mean) and hence people like me, who try to do one simple good deed get criticized at (not openly, but definitely in the heart).

Not to mention the fact that if I am doing the right thing, the others who are looking (read: staring) at me in tandem will ultimately get the impression that I am a foreigner (probably from the US, UK, Canada etc). Does this mean that we all want to consider people from these countries as “Odd”, just because they are trying to be as civil as they should be? Or do we want to keep our home as dirty and as full of lawlessness as it is at present. Keep on pondering over it, because there is no way that things appear to improve (seemingly) as it has been for years.