"A Sweaping Victory" ..........I saw a notice on our society's bulletin board from our residence's President inviting people to come forward for a "ShramDaan" on a freezing sunday morning(at 8a.m for god,s sake!). The very idea of leaving the warm bed and step out into the freezing morning made one grumpy enough, leave alone picking up showels and broom in the name of community service!

But my heart warmed up instantly to see all the old and not so young people already halfway through cleaning the dry leaves from the driveway, loading and unloading buckets full of dry leaves and dirt. I was amused to see them laughing at themselves and teasing each other of knee pains and backaches that they sure would be complaining of later in the day. The only motivating factor driving them was the promise of a hot cup of Chai waiting at the end of their ordeal, made by some equally enthusiastic housewife! Finally the cleaning part over, the cart carrying the dirt and dry leaves was driven by one of the enthusiast, the others following him on foot with such great aplomb and pride, mind you it was nothing short of a grand religious procession till the final dumpyard.

That vivid picture of one of our people carting away the kachra will forever remain etched on my mind as the bunch of people who sweeped the driveways with the sweeper's trademark broom and drove his cart that day were not only well educated professionals and retired beutocrats but most of them were brahmins! Your english educated sensibilities may immediatly say "so what's the big deal", well Sir, I will tell you why it is such a big deal; -We take great pride in being a great nation with rich cultural heritage of many languages and religions all living together in perfect harmony, however our roots are still burried deep in the rotten ancient system of caste.

Though these lines are getting blurred in a cosmopolitan setup, still it is very often we read almost every second day of a couple being burnt alive for daring to defy the caste systems and paying with their dear lives. And this happens just a few mile away from our metroes. If after 60 years of independance we still have caste based politics and people demanding reservations even in the selections of judges then what I witnessed here is indeed a big deal! And therefore I salute all those people who were out there on a cold sunday morning working in unison towards making our society a cleaner and better place to live in. Neena Wagh