{"id":965,"date":"2021-12-06T07:56:55","date_gmt":"2021-12-06T07:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/?p=965"},"modified":"2021-12-06T07:56:58","modified_gmt":"2021-12-06T07:56:58","slug":"the-pool-in-my-backyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/the-pool-in-my-backyard\/","title":{"rendered":"The pool in my backyard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Avni Singh<\/em><\/strong>
Podar World School Sama, Vadodara<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My dad’s ever-changing job made us live almost everywhere except in India, our home country. We visited our extended family in India during the holidays, especially Varanasi, my hometown; they took us to the great river, the Ganges. The very first time when I travelled to the ghats (the steps leading to the river), I was excited to behold a spectacular sight of the river that takes away our sins with it. The Ganges, thronged by people from all corners of the subcontinent, serve as a water source for hundreds of villages and cities. I had heard several stories of the holy river from my grandparents. My cousins often bathed in it like a pool in our backyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was utterly stunned and saddened to see the sight of the river. It was bursting with plastic bottles, flowers, polythene packets, and things I possibly could not describe. We returned without touching the water. Distraught with the thought of how a river considered holy, to be in such a state? I imagined that no one had tried to clean it up. Researching on it I found that Ganga Action Plan (GAP), launched in 1986, had tried cleaning it but did not achieve its high goals of preventing industries and sewage lines from polluting the river. So, during our visits in the later years, we just visited the Ganga as a ritual. I learned from my parents that the government had launched the Namami Gange program in 2014 to clean the river, and I hoped it would succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The COVID-19 pandemic brought us back to India in 2020. Our relatives said that the Ganges looked cleaner as most industries were closed during the lockdown. There was a buzz in town that though COVID-19 made us suffer, it cleaned the river naturally. The river certainly looked clean from the outside. However, I had my doubts. So, I surfed online and came across reports of NGOs that work for cleaning the Ganges. They conduct water quality tests often and the recent results were shocking. The main reason for the pollution is untreated sewage water disposal into the river. The industrial wastes, leftovers due to religious activities, and land pollution runoff into the river add to the low water quality. Thus the river is not wholly cleaned. I am not proud of having a pool in my backyard but ashamed of not making any efforts to clean the great river that gives lives to millions of living beings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, logically, after reading about the faecal material in the water, I had no intention of going into it. However, when we made a trip to the ghat this time, everyone except me was inside the water. As I watched, a man got in the knee-deep water and spit out a huge mouthful of well-chewed tobacco. My family watched this and rushed out of the water, not minding the cold at all. Then, he brushed his teeth and gargled in the same water. Finally, he bathed in it and worshipped the same river, which he polluted a few minutes earlier. We should all join hands and contribute to cleaning the river and the minds of the people who worship it but do not respect its sanctity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

( Photo by Shiv Prasad<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Avni SinghPodar World School Sama, Vadodara My dad’s ever-changing job made us live almost everywhere except in India, our home country. We visited our extended family in India during the holidays, especially Varanasi, my hometown; they took us to the great river, the Ganges. The very first time when I travelled to the ghats (the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-simply-express"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=965"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":968,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965\/revisions\/968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takhte.in\/VoiceofViews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}