There is a famous section of Buenos Aires named Boca where the colorful houses and tango music filling the air with tango dancers lining the streets has turned into quite the tourist destination. Boca is probably most famous for its football (soccer) team, the Boca Jrs. The Boca Jrs. have of the most illustrious histories of any football team in South America but they are best known for two things: Maradona and the most devout musically gifted fanatical fans on Earth. Maradona lead the Argentina national team to its victory over West Germany in 1986 World Cup, in which he collected the Golden Ball award as the tournament's best player. He scored both goals in the 2-1 victory over England in the quarter-final of the '86 tournament. The first goal was an unpenalized handball known as the "Hand of God", while the second goal was a spectacular 60-metre weave through six England players, commonly referred to as "The Goal of the Century" or, in Argentina, "The Cosmic Kite." He is legend around the globe but the fans of the Boca Jrs. take a back seat to no one. Fans from around the world come to Buenos Aires to learn from the musical geniuses in the stands as the have a song for each player and many more tunes to passionately sing out depending on the situation. Witnessing a Boca Jrs. game is the pinnacle for any sporting enthusiast around the globe.
I found the Boca fanatics and Maradona nostalgia to be the most interesting while in Argentina, but since in India, I often think of the other main attraction to Boca: the mixed and matched colors on each house. The reason for the lime green doors, yellows window frames, red, orange or yellow siding, and many other combinations all adorned on one house, was the scarcity of paint when the area was established. Boca has always been and still is the blue collar section of Buenos Aires always pinched for every nickel or in this case, every drop of paint. It became Boca's trademark: crazy colored houses lining the river port. If Boca couldn't paint their houses one solid color due to paint shortages, applying the same logic to India would mean paint should be the rarest product in the country, surpassing gas that is now over $5 a gallon at the pump. Buenes Aires had one section of the city with wacky colored houses making it famous but wild and wacky colored houses are the norm in India. What happened to all of the paint?
Pink door, blue windows, red siding and a multi colored Shiva shrine adorned with an array of flower necklaces draped on the colorful figure; a typical scene driving around the Indian countryside. The colors do not end with the houses though. The women love bright colored clothes in many various combinations; pink saris, baby blue pajama pants, and orange sarongs wrapped around their necks. There are golden fields of wheat which have quickly been replaced with rice paddies looking like dozens of miniature green-tinted reflection pools as the rice sprouts emerge from the shallow water, blossoming apple and cherry orchards, produce stands on every street corner selling exotic fresh fruits, bright orange turbans from the Sikh Punjabi tourists, and much more. The truck drivers, a profession that doesn't usually attract the artistic spirits, paint the most intricate flowery and religious symbols on their trucks. Some even take the time to crawl beneath their trucks to paint their favorite Hindu God on the rear wheel axle. With so many colors in the oddest places, I have labelled India the "Land of Color."
Not all of the colors are good though. TRASH! It is everywhere, even the most remote beautiful places are scared with plastic wrappers of every make and model. Most city streets lining with trash a foot high in the gutters being picked through by kids, cows and dogs for any forgotten bits of nourishment. It is heartbreaking that such a beautiful country is being destroyed by trash. When a driver finishes a water bottle, he will simply throw it out the window. The same goes for the passengers with any and all trash. The blue trash plastic bags, the red spicy masala potato chips bags, and much more are clogging the rivers and streams. I actually saw a dump truck go from Manali town with a full load of trash properly put in the trash bin, drive five kilometers to the dried out river bed, and dump the load knowing the flood waters will wash it away as the glaciers melt. Does he ever think of where that trash might go? I doubt that he considers the river water from the Himalayas brings life to roughly a billion Indians on the sub-continent. But why should he care? Right!
This is not just a problem in India. It has been a constant theme throughout my trip. Many small villages around the world have started to outlaw plastic bags because of this. This didn't bode well or my friend Jane in Tanzania when she came to Longido village to teach the women how to crochet plastic bags into hand bags for tourists. We did find some plastic bags…from the store! Not her fulfilling her original objective of cleaning up trash but it worked out well. One person tried to tell me that most developing countries' citizens have traditionally discarded any extra wrappers or bags back when such things were made naturally and were bio-degradable. Then came the modern plastic wrappings that never disappear and someone forgot to tell the average Jo this important piece of information. I don't fully believe this theory because plastic has been around for a long time and people are still littering.
A major reason the trash disposal is lacking in most countries is the lack of infrastructure to properly dispose of all the trash. Infrastructure costs money and these countries think they have bigger problems than being environmentally conscience. India has the money now becoming an economic powerhouse that some predict will one day have an economy just as big if not bigger than the US. Lets just hope they clean up their country because it is an amazing place.
Even though it's trash, it is still colorful. Yet again, earning India a fitting title in my book as the "Land of Color."
Even though it's trash, it is still colorful. Yet again, earning India a fitting title in my book as the "Land of Color."
