Seminar 4
On Waste, Smell, Rurality and Citizen Science
6 November, 2024
They are moving with the scorching sun. Dust is spreading everywhere, all washes away with the wind. When I look up into the sky there is a drifting tornado, which carries plastic bags, leafs and other garbage, spreading it all over the land. After seeing this, I become curious. I saw that everyone around me was carrying a large stone like mass on their backs and sometimes on their heads. They have been carrying this heavy stone-like material for the past few years and because of the weight they look completely tired, energy-less, irritated and behaving in an unnatural way. One of the people came close to me. He asked “can you please help me a little to remove this stone from my back?”
“It looks like stone, but it’s not. What kind of material is this?” I asked, as it was producing liquids and strong smells.
“Are you new to this city” he asked. “When did you arrive here?”
I replied “Yes, I am new; I arrived in the city a few months back”.
He smiled a suspicious kind of smile. That smile contained a thousand layers of stories about the city, about the human and natural world’s condition. I helped him to remove the mass from his back, and we sat together. “Can you tell me exactly what happened in this city?” I asked him.
“Who are you?” he asked.
I replied “I am a night supervisor here and I am trying to explore your city. Can you help me?”
“Well…” he said. “Whatever this city gives, it takes back with interest. From humans it takes the soul as interest, and us humans become spirits and stay roaming the city. If you want to explore I can help you but you have to pay.”
“What kind of payment and how much?” I asked
“Whatever I tell you, you have to take that information and spread through the air so that people will know and understand. Whatever you spread around in the air will always stay there moving around us. Another condition is; you will carry this stone, my burden”. He suddenly shifted it from his shoulder to mine and we began our trip.
We were walking through the smoggy air when suddenly we saw a shape – at first it looked like a cave, then seemed like a mountain, or a spaceship, or perhaps the crown of the city. “What is that exactly?” I asked.
“It’s a visible ghost” he answered. “We create them. We are the creators of this world, this habitat. It is for the punishment of every human that we carry these stones. These visible ghosts will tell you the dark side of the city, sometimes silent and sometimes violent. Sometimes it represents our history and human presence. Sometimes humans try to remove our history in different ways but we call this the landfill. Everyday of our lives small things happen in different areas; environmentally, socially, ecologically, domestically and politically.” We look at them but we also ignore them. These things slowly rise and move around us, until suddenly they become a big problem and come into the attention of everyone. We try and solve these problems but people try and hide them. This cycle takes a huge amount of our time and lives, affecting our future generations.
-Excerpt from fictional writing work on the topic of solid waste management in India.
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