All roads lead to the Charminar during Ramzan in Hyderabad. As citizens, tourists, food bloggers and walkers troop to the heritage precinct through the day and night, what they experience and what they leave behind is posing a challenge to the civic body.
At 11 p.m. on Sunday night, the sanitation crew sit near the sidewalk of Pathergatti chit chatting. Similar crews await the exit of milling crowds before getting down to work. The road near Madina junction is so crowded that some of the workers get inside the Ashoorkhana and wait. “Every year we go through this. But this year there is a lot more plastic waste,” says Savitri, who is part of the sanitation crew.
By 3 a.m., the shoppers and hawkers disappear from the arterial road while some of them move closer to Charminar. While the people are not there, the cobblestoned path and the asphalt road is covered with the plastic trash, packaging material, discarded food and waste water thrown out of the shops after day’s business. Walking is dangerous as the plastic sheets and water make it tricky and slippery on the smooth stones.
