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What I've wanted to do since my first week here.....

A company-wide clean up day! Yippee. I've been wanting to pick up trash - no small feat - for months. It is everywhere. As Deepak says, 'It is the Indian way.' I told him change can start with him. On this morning, when he asked for a T-Shirt, I told him I won't give a shirt to someone who litters (yikes, did I really say that?).

We broke up in 3 groups: North Campus, CP and Gurgaon. I headed to North Campus with the 2 Ambassadors, Durand, and 2 stranded travelers that thought picking up trash would be an interesting way to start a 15 month holiday (their flight to Nepal was canceled, so they ended up at our place for the weekend).

We met at 8:30am (early), no supplies, so waited. Then with masks, thick plastic gloves, brooms, dustpans, straw sweepers, and bright yellow t-shirts, we went to work.

  • I quickly became even more adverse to the small packets of a tobacco type product that is put in paan. They were everywhere and hard to pick up.
  • Small planters were quick and easy as they collected the trash in the weeds and you could pull out both at once - double beautification
  • Large planter were a pain because trash was stuck in all of them
  • People stared a lot, but smiled when I asked how they were doing in Hindi
  • I found a guy who had recently thrown some plastic on the ground and asked if he had any trash. He picked it up and put it in my bag
  • We were very careful when cleaning around a tree temple as our hands were dirty and therefore impure
  • You could tell what kind of stall was nearby without looking up. Bottlecaps = drinkwalla
  • Some guys asked, 'What are refined ladies like you doing picking up trash?' (This happened in Hindi, but I got a translated version of the conversation.
  • A boy came up to me and pointed at my psuedo-glove and after I gave it to him he ran around picking up trash for about a minute. We took pics. My 'gloved' hand and the boy (far left)
  • The Puma store owners were so elated, they invited us in for drinks and food. We told them we had a lot of work to do, but went back after and got a Strawberry Fanta. Never thought I would ever like Strawberry Fanta, but after 3 hours of bending over trash, it tasted good.
A few of us ended the day chowing down on giant plates of mexican food at Rodeo and Li showed up to start taking pictures of every part of the rest of the weekend.

(Cowboy boots not shown)

Then we headed to check out the Gandhi museum. Driver got lost despite repeated requests to stop and ask for directions. What made it worse, is that I said we could fit 5 in the car, so Emma was sitting on top of Brian's lap. There are 2 museums, one was open. Lots of material.


We went home to chill for a while as we were all beat and then headed to China Club for dinner.

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