This incident happened to me almost a year ago. It was a cold and gloomy wintry evening and I was huddled in a crowded bus. Chilled to the bone, I found it difficult to keep my body and soul together. Perhaps, being from the Terai region and new to the bustling capital city, the biting cold was too much for my frail body to endure.

When the bus started moving lazily, I took out a packet of peanuts from my pocket. Cracking and munching the stuff was a good way to pass the time and beat the cold as well. I did not have a polythene bag or any such thing in which to put the shells. Wondering what to do with it, I happened to see two guys happily cracking and munching peanuts, littering the bus floor in the process. Soon I followed suit, although I was well aware that it was morally wrong to do so. I said to myself, “Why should I care so much for cleanliness when most people litter the public parks, the streets and their locality? What difference, after all, would the efforts of a few people like me make?”

The bus was speeding towards its destination when an elegant looking lady, stretching her hands forward, handed me a polythene bag, with the following words, “Will you mind putting the shells in this bag instead of littering the floor?” These words came as a shock weighing down heavily on me. Words cannot adequately describe what I felt then. My facial expression turned black and blue and even red. My entire self-esteem turned to dust. I had some kind of a hangover. I brooded over what the lady might be thinking about me: a savage, perhaps a dirty and uncivilised fellow with lowly breeding. Feeling stupid, all I wanted was to get out of the bus immediately.

When I think about the incident, I feel ashamed even today. Though small it may be, the incident has taught me an important lesson: Always do what is right notwithstanding what others are doing.

Littering public places just because many people do it, cheating in the examination because it is common among students, etc. is not a healthy practice. In short, doing something although you know it is bad and morally demeaning by reasoning that others are doing it is utterly misleading logic. So let’s do away with it.