‘The stink assaults your senses long before you see it!’ complains a friend. That is until you arrive right next to the sight of the mess. Dehradun is on the verge of drowning in its own garbage. With safai-karamchari been on strike for the past 11 days, the town has been reduced to a heap of filth! That is the condition in all the bustling colonies too. 
While in the olden days, ministers would brandish brooms, have their pictures taken as part of the cleanliness drive, today is if you went looking for them, you’d cannot find them for they seem to have gone missing. ‘Have they gone for a ride astride a broom?’ A friend asks, with a mask on his nose to keep out the stench that pervades the atmosphere.
These mountains of filth have turned into grazing grounds for cows and rummaging fields for canines. What have we reduced this green valley to? It was called ‘the city of grey heads and green hedges!’ But wait. All is not lost yet. Two young men Ajay Gariola and Azjad Kazi have taken up the task of cleaning the rubbish around their society, a daily ritual done with sincerity. It is this that has seen many join the dynamic duo.
61 year old Pradeep Chandra Khanduri a retired ONGC officer brandishes a spade to clear up the mess. Speaking to Newspost he said, “At times its the young generation which teaches you a lot, for the past two days I have been watching these two work diligently cleaning up the rubbish piled up outside our society, they have changed the way I felt about things and realised that you too can make a change, instead of choosing to turn a blind eye or blame the government .”
Cutting across the barriers of age and gender, they toil on, leading by personal example. Others are chipping in to fight this man-made menace and with the safai-karamchari strike coming to an end, this phase too shall pass. But its heartening to see citizens doing their bit with a a sense of pride and belonging, trying to do their bit by becoming waste warriors for the city that is home to them.
