Covering Environment (Deprivation-Style)

Have you ever dived in dirty water? You know the kind that stinks more than a week’s cold can handle? Or waded waist-deep in the crappiest of Chennaaay crap. (Literally!) Or just suffered unusually rotten luck? I am sure, the kindred spirits out there will agree to having experienced at least one of the above. But then, my claim stands apart in one particular matter. Yes, I too have done these spectacular things before in my ever happening lyf. But never had I had an awe-inspiring opportunity to do ALL these in one day itself.

Sorely, but surely, the acts mentioned above were performed by a murder of 45 (plus the elusive 46th member of the group). The following activities might astound thee, even get you to raise that eyebrow, but please do not ever question the necessity of pushing a fifty-seater so-not-capable-of-ever-emitting-any-pollution-again bus through the muck and slush of Chennaaay city. Never. It is times lyk these which get you wondering if it would have been better if you had just stayed in your warm bed instead. (Preferably with your stuffed cuddly toy) Just a passing rhetoric thought.

The Highlights of the day included the below mentioned so-berry NOT trivial incidents. Try not to whimper.

~ Witnessing *The Pulicat Effect* One moment being waist-deep in the cleanest of ocean water and the next in the dirtiest of human waste. (Only a diluted version, to make it even more, inhumanly possible, queasier.)
~ Being up to thine thorax in crappy situations is the perfect occasion to pay gloomy attention to the past wrongs of your non-existent lyf.
~ Wading through ankle-deep slushy waters. Without your shoes, hoping the lurking snakes do not fancy your yellow socks. Just not today, please.
~ Standing directly opposite Singapore. Give or take a couple of thousand miles.
~ Munching on hot food standing under the cover of a Fire Station yard.
~ Getting a glimpse of mountains. Priceless.
~Finding out those mountains were made of stacked up rubbish. The price of hundreds of slum-dwellers lives.
~ Gazing at the slick-covered Buckingham Canal.
~ Pitying the extra students who wanted to tag along. Their naïve imaginations had never conjured up shoe-bites as an after-effect to the journey.
~ Wet soggy socks.
~ Pain in places you never knew existed.
~ Lingering smell of sewage the day after.
~ The time of great bonding. I mean, who would disagree with the idea of making friends over a roadful of mulch, pushing a fifty-seater bus in addition. Best Friends Forever in the making.

Nevertheless, 30th of October is definitely etched in my mind as a spectacularly different day. (read different as dirtily different.) In my Over-Achievement award speech I am certainly going to thank my Environment professor. I can just imagine Sir standing in front of the future batches of ACJ wannabe-Environment-students, giving them a review of what to expect on a typical field trip. (We have, of course, set the standard.) But my future juniors are going to be one disappointed lot. Our trip was definitely once-in-a-lifetime journey… all the imaginable stars had aligned to present us with the rottenest luck ever. Such a combination is un/fortunately is possible only once in a googol years (The Grasshopper effect notwithstanding.)