Littering and Signs of Spirituality along the Roads
Of course inner and outer purity don’t always agree. You can have a clean carpet with a lot of ugly things hidden below, and also reat inner purity can hide under a cover of seeming filth. It’s not always easy to distinguish both.
This afternoon I had a little walk down to the seaside at Visakhapatnam. Along the roads the open waste water channels were filled with garbage, and where they flew into the ocean, litter also decorated the greyish-black way of the waste waters, with the particular smell of rotten materials… Though in the early morning people are sweeping the nearby streets, all kinds of papers and plastics are decorating free spaces. Some dogs were searching their food in a garbage container, which was surrounded by rubbish. Of course at home in Switzerland, which is famous for cleanliness, the littering is getting more and more a problem of the cities, too.
On the other hand here in India you see little idols decorated with flowers at many corners. And on the rickshaws you find prayers or pictures of saints and gods, being an expression of spirituality present in everyday life. But where do outer and inner beauty and purity meet?
A garbage container with stray dogs opposite a little street altar
