Trash Talking

Jeshanth Kani
Jul 25, 2017 · 3 min read
Well, this is familiar

I woke up to my neighbors yelling at the other tenants in my apartment. The garbage debacle that had unwittingly exploded over their gates last night was the reason. Turf wars of the street dogs had claimed yet another garbage bag and we were taking the heat.

The unfortunate incident happened to transcend more unfortunate events not unlike the maggots from the garbage bag. Anyway, as I sleepily walked out the front door where the noises further rattled my muddled brain, it was safe to say my brain was a whirlwind of sludge now. Brainado anyone?

“Stop throwing them at our front gates!” said a guy who looked like he’d pull out his sword from his really bright pajamas and kick us into the house, yelling Sparta!!!

Shielding my eyes, I heard another person say, “The trash is right in front of our houses every morning!” By our houses, she meant hers. It didn’t take a non-sleepy, super-intelligent, forever-handsome-no-matter-what-time-of-the-day guy to figure that out.

Then it hit me. I don’t know if it was the fact that my brain was sludge now but they were being no different than the dogs last night. It was about their turf. Their clean spaces. Fuck littering as long as my home looks neat enough to lick mayo off the porch! It was a rerun of last night’s dog fight in the much loved human version. We even had cheerleaders! No, wait, that was my head playing tricks, thanks to the gaudy pajamas.

I agree everyone would love to have their homes uber clean to welcome guests and let them know that they live a squeaky clean life — the exact reason why I have no people over, well that’s a different story. Not unlike how we show off our best profile pictures as opposed to the tagged ones. However, what’s sad here is that they were raising their voices for their homes and not the entire street. I mean if they were reeeeeallly keen on cleanliness, wouldn’t they have the same vigour to form an army, paint their faces green and lead the revolution to a cleaner city? One particular guy, kept saying “…rats, rats, rats!” Apparently rats dragged the trash to this guy’s gates. Ok, fine, we get it, Sir. Rats love bringing you gifts, you’re lovable as cheese, you fine man, you.

The whole of my city is unfortunately a big, stinking pile of trash. I hate to say it, someone has to. If these guys stood up for the street or the entire area to recycle and clean up the lakes that’d be pretty sweet! But, our homes are clean so why in blue hell would we bother taking care of other’s mess? Um… Because it’s your city? No no no no, that’s the government’s job. They clean our city, we clean our homes.

The meaningless squabble was leading nowhere, each one wanted to dump — pun intended- their anger onto the others while never really suggesting a solution. So, the best thing would do is to train the rats to take our garbage out to the dump yard two streets away.

And with that particular sense of enlightenment I went back to bed promising myself to clean my room someday.

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