Ode to a Garbage Bin

This poem has been sent by Major General (retired) S.G. Vombatkere with a letter that reads: “Garbage Cess is being collected with effect from January 1, 2007 for door-to-door collection of garbage but the Garbage Bins
at street corners are still in the same sorry state that they were in.”

This evidently has provoked him to compose the following lines. He retired from military service in 1996, from the post of Additional DG (Discipline and Vigilance) in Army HQ, New Delhi. He currently lives in Mysore.

Dear little Garbage Bin,
 I can see the mess you’re in!
 Marked “MUDA” or “MCC”
 Your fate’s as sorry as can be.
 People fling their waste at you;
 Kitchen waste and plastics too.
 Dogs and pigs and cows and crows
 Browse in the garbage; and it shows
 How people are not agitated
 If their neighbourhood is decorated
 With plastic bags and kitchen waste
 Flung by servants with undue haste
 At you, dear Garbage Bin.
 Oh, what a sorry state you’re in!

Even though you don’t complain
 When garbage spills in the roadside drain
And never are you kept quite clean;
 Mysore town has never seen
 Roads and streets being litter-free
 In recent public memory.
 Garbage Bins are ill-treated;
 At every corner one is greeted
 With a full or half-filled stinking bin
 (And here are details of the sin);
 Rubbish does the bin surround
 Covering every inch of ground
 With a reeking, stinking, sorry mess
 That (surely any child will guess)
 Violates the Rights of Garbage Bins
 By the Corporation’s deadly sins.
 But let us not get into fights;
 Garbage Bins have Legal Rights
 To be cleaned and treated well,
 As any advocate will tell.
 With other Bins do have communion
 And quickly form a Labour Union
 To stand up for your legal right
 And fight injustice with your might.
 Plead with the Court, praying thus:
 “Issue a Writ of Mandamus
 To the Official, whoe’er he be
 That Garbage Bins shall be kept quite free
 Of stinking garbage all around.
 And if any such is found
 The Court shall straight’way without fail
 Put that gentleman in Jail.”

 Sure, you’re in a sorry mess.
 But even you must now confess
 That unless you stand up for your right
 And fight the fight with all your might,
 Officials will quite ignore you
 And change the City of Mysooru
 From “Garden City” to “Garbage City”
 And swallow money (more’s the pity!).

 I’m sorry to write at such great length;
 But I pray that it will give you strength
 To fight against the Men of Sin
 And get out o’ the stinking mess you’re in!
 So fight it out, keep up your chin,
 Dear little Garbage Bin.