You have not failed until you have capitulated to a sense of failure. Shefali Ganesh, resident of Dinesh Vihar, a gated community in Thalambur, has come within a hair’s breath of just that kind of capitulation, but held herself back with poise, and well, hope.
Her attempts to influence her neighbours to segregate waste, send different categories of it to their rightful places and not the dumping grounds, have met with resistance as impregnable as the walls of Gibraltar. It is a frustration of the stripe that can drive one to self-help paperbacks dispensing chicken soup for the soul persevering against all odds.
Shefali is still persevering: she was in attendance at the recent dry waste collection drive by Residents of Kasturbanagar Association (ROKA), as she has been in every other drive held by the group in preceding years. As usual, she carted her dry waste plus a few neighbours’ as well her parents’ dry waste (they live at Indira Nagar in Adyar) and dropped it at a venue in the Adyar area. One of those days when her car agrees to take on the duties of a garbage pick-up truck.
She calls herself a hopeful apprentice of ROKA methods, hoping there would be ROKA-like, pan-Chennai drives originating in OMR.
