Passengers, trash and flights
AND then we find trash. We find the trash not just in the parks, pavements, etc,. of course the authorities clean that trash.
The trash found was nowhere else but onboard a PIA flight. The flight from the UK got an undeserving dash of filth from the passengers onboard.
Recently reported and much talked about, becoming a hot topic, was the delaying of this very PIA flight due to the crew busy cleaning up trash, scattered here and there senselessly on the floors and seats of aircraft.
Not to speak of the toilets for that may be a bit too much in bad taste — pun intended! That was reason enough for the cabin crew to divert their attention towards cleaning up, therefore, a flight delayed and both the airline and authorities shared a tad bit of blame from some varied sources.
This particular occurrence got the viral media going wild with pictures being posted all over, obviously for the sake of Likes, but also awareness for the masses.
Nevertheless, we are not going to learn no matter how much awareness we do create on or off social media and other branches of the same.
The subject is that of the upbringing and the correction of behaviour both at collective and individual levels, the strains of which run deeper than just the apparent. A question here is viable.
Why is it so, that the very same people when abroad, abide to that particular country’s rules and regulations, by the book?
Years ago, I had written about the same issue.
Littering the parks and public places of relaxation for the masses – time lapse – and till today it still continues without any sense of guilt, from the ones carrying on with the grand habit of littering as they go along their way.
Here, I wouldn’t exclude myself, purely, because of the reason that I too unwittingly simply fling away a smoke or something.
There is no one to come and ask me not to, because this is how we are brought up. Brought up to ignore. The authorities, no matter what and how they try would find it an uphill task to instill the culture of “cleaning your own trash” amongst the general public.
This is the very reason which, when talking about environment and its well-being makes us fall behind in the pews of neglect and estrangement to the subject entirely. Neither we are educated nor schooled to keep our surroundings clean.
Most of us hardly get any training from our homes either, towards the same. Take a look outside the education institutions and sadly our state of mind is apparent.
This takes me back years, years of almost yore, of my father’s days at the college. The anecdote goes as such, that at the commencement of the class the students had stubbed their cigarettes on the floor, when, in walks their professor and sizes up the entire area, then silently moves among the seats, picking up the wasted butts of cigarettes from the floor and disposing them in the waste basket.
As I recall from what was narrated, that day onwards none of the smokers ever littered the ground with their trash. Lesson learnt – learnt through actions and not rhetoric.
What legacy are we leaving behind for our coming generations? Are we going to let them just learn by trial and error becoming a subject of ridicule, or are we going to make an effort teaching them values that they make a name both for themselves and the country they belong to.
Again the solution is: Lesson learnt – learnt through actions and not rhetoric. We shall only and only teach the posterity through our own actions and not the rhetoric.
—The writer is senior Contributor to major dailies & magazines.
