The Other Side

On one side, the ocean.

On the other — a dump yard. Massive. Filled. Filthy.

I'm standing in front of it and I don't have the right words, only the wrong feeling. The kind that sits in your chest and doesn't move. Dogs picking through it. Birds too. Everyone feeding on what people threw away without a second thought.

How do you do this? How do you live near something this beautiful and do this to it?

I don't understand. I genuinely don't.

This is rural India — and I say that not as an excuse, not as an explanation, just as the plain fact of where I am standing. And what I am looking at is pathetic. There's no softer word for it, and I'm not looking for one.

The ocean doesn't know. It just keeps going, indifferent and clean, doing what it has always done. And right here, just metres away, this.

Two worlds. No distance between them.

This is exactly why I'm here.