A wrongly directed route on Google Maps gave me direction for life

In 2018, I found myself following a longer route back to my home built in green open surroundings. Was literally following instructions of lady from Google Maps and last thing I knew was that I was going to witness something that will change me as a person forever, something that will make me feel disgusted of my ways of living as a ‘human’.

Even after two years I remember that sight. Being at driver’s seat, amidst honking of other cars and two wheelers I noticed that I was entering in a meat market. An open meat market with countless butcher shops, meat of different animals hanging at those shops and butchers killing few.

As I drove just a few meters further, observed thousands and thousands of eagles.. every where.. on electricity tower, transformer, on shops’ rooftops, on road side poles, on trees, on nearby houses, just every where, every few inches there were eagles.

A few meters ahead and it started stinking. I could understand eagles near an open meat market but why the place started stinking. It just became unbearable.

And suddenly I couldn’t believe what I witnessed. It was no less than a mountain but filled with Garbage. Yes, A Garbage Mountain.

I was actually passing by a landfill site.

A Garbage landfill equivalent to 40 football pitches, which in years had grown as tall as 65 meters. A landfill that was predicted to grow almost as tall as Taj Mahal. One among the tallest landfills of the world. Unbearably stinking, sight of no other birds except eagles, openly hung meat and a tall hill of garbage.

The disgust of this site lasted with me for many days and I spoke about this to almost everyone I had met for few days after that. But I didn’t forget about it, just couldn’t. Started reading and researching more about this site. I even spoke to my mentor about it (who btw is a big time Stephen Covey’s fan and follower). He gave me a patient hearing, watched me as I was talking about all the facts I had learned following my research and said,” You can’t change the world. But you must identify and operate in Your Circle of Control”.

Basically start by doing what is possible.

So I started.