11/ 100 Rubbish Dog
Our Haveli in Jodhpur was nestled towards the end of a narrow and windy lane, a little higher than the market square of the old town below. As with most of the parts of India that I’ve been to we were surrounded by temples and mosques and places of worship of every kind. There were also schools hidden in old buildings that looked like abandoned temples scattered through the town.
Every morning, around 06:00, we would be gently woken by this very uplifting and joyful song, with absolutely no idea where it was coming from. I knew it almost certainly wouldn’t be from the minaret next door as their call to prayer was never tuneful (apart from one day when the adhan was done, just once, by a muezzin with a truly beautiful voice). My guess was it was from the nearby Hindu temple (they like a bit of jolly music) or the local school.
Have a listen to the first 30 seconds and take a guess at what you think the music might be for.
That’s right – it’s the Swachh Bharat Mission song. National award winning lyricist Prasoon Joshi wrote this song to mark the ongoing ‘Swachh Bharat’ campaign. The music composer of the song is Vishal Khurana. I bet you are wondering what Swachh Bharat means?
Clean India.
The song, beloved by children apparently, is played by the garbage trucks across the whole of India as a heads-up that your rubbish disposal vehicle has arrived. The idea is that it parks up on a corner for a while with it’s trailer lids lifted into the sky to give easy access to all the local people who come running from their houses and pop their full rubbish bags into the back.
Except this is India and, of course, this doesn’t happen.
In practice the truck sits with it’s gaping mouth wide open like a newly hatched blackbird. However, instead of feeding it with bags of rubbish people walk out with their bags and put them in a heap on the street corner. Many folk don’t even use a bag – they just tip their bin out into the pile. The driver of the truck then comes along and has to manually sweep all (some of) the rubbish onto a tarpaulin and lift it all manually into the back of the lorry.
I asked our guide one day why people didn’t want to use the truck that was right there in front of them whilst the two of us stood and watched the scene unfold. He just told me that was the way it has always been.
You can read more about the Swachh Bharat Mission here.
The song was downloaded from https://bijnor.nic.in/audio-gallery/swachh-bharat-mission-audio-song-2/
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