Thiruvananthapuram

This is a town in southern Kerala, the Indian state on the southern west coast; it is also called Trivandrum, because westerners can't pronounce the real name.  This is the start of my December holiday, a little tour 'round the south, some off the beaten track (here) and some on (Kochin, Bangalore, Mysore).  The much touted local zoo, called by Lonely Planet one of the very best in the nation, is a horrid prison for animals with pleasant leafy walkways and the omnipresent garbage.  The two also-touted art museums similarly disappoint - especially the one closed for renovations. And wouldn't you know, there's been an auto(taxi) strike, making me walk more than I wanted in the blazing sun, and then being seriously ripped off by a scab.  I knew he was a scab, rather than an owner of his own taxi (who are not on strike) when he wouldn't take me all the way down the road to my hotel, making me walk the last 100 yards, to avoid being seen by the other drivers.  After charging me Rs. 100 for a Rs. 30 ride.  ($2.25 instead of 70 cents) The nerve!
Then today was a long jaunt out of town to another destination hailed as lovely - Neyyer Dam Park - and it was, again except for the garbage.  Really a lot of garbage!  Walking around a big lake formed by a dam, with little rest stops and various sights, piles of styrofoam take-out boxes.  And plastic bottles and cigarette packs and on and on.
The forest that circles most of the lake includes a big rubber plantation so I saw hundreds of trees with little cups and spouts attached, dripping white goo into the cups, and pretty spiral scoring all up the trees.  Inside the plantation itself, fenced from the path, was no garbage; just piles up against the fence.
As I learned from my Urban Studies majored daughter (Rachel) garbage on the ground is a direct result of absence of garbage cans.  And it's true.  There are virtually none anywhere I've been.  I look for them; my family laughs at me for this, saying of course there aren't any, and they freely throw their trash on the ground, laughing even more as I put mine in my bag to take home.  I suspect my trash receptacle from my room gets emptied into the road too, after a brief stop in a larger receptacle in the back area of the house.
Meanwhile, my very pleasant and clean hotel ($17 per night) has a tv with HBO but no BBC or CNN, so I watch Bruce Willis movies and an Indian news channel that is allegedly in English.  Listening very carefully I get the gist, especially since they are quite repetitious, so there are several chances to catch their meaning.  Some of it is too obscure and local to understand, but some is grimly understandable.  The big news is that a man who was the Inspector General of the Police of India molested a 14 year old girl in 1990; she killed herself in 1993; he was promoted many times while the case was pending (from 1990) and now has been sentenced to 6 months in jail. The case is now on appeal.  He is shown sitting in the sun in his villa's large garden (I hope he burns to death in this sun) and is quoted as saying, "Forget it; it's so long ago."  Much breast beating in the media and by the prosecutor about the light sentence.  Bare mention of the 19 years, thus far.
Tomorrow a long day to palaces, temples, the tip of India where 3 oceans meet, no television, and I'll bet anyone Rs. 10 lots more garbage.