Clean sweep!
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well’.
No work is insignificant. All labour that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
– Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
KARACHI: There he is amid a tornado of dust of his own making. His hair has turned light brown as dust settled on his head, his clothes are dirty as are his hands and feet.
When asked why can’t he, being in the line of cleaning, be clean himself, he blinks before looking down at his dirty hands and feet. “Baji, that can’t be,” he says. “Either I clean your roads, or I clean myself. If I clean myself, I would not want to touch anything dirty or dusty and you will find a clean sweeper here but very dirty roads,” he reasons as he gets back to his work.
The storm of dust from his jharoo, or besom, makes you cover your nose and mouth as you turn away. Meanwhile, there he is gathering trash on one side of the footpath without any protection or dust mask.