I have been doing story on Bagmati River for some time now. What ever activities happen in Bagmati I have interest on it. One of them was Bagmati cleaning at Guheswori, Gaurighat. I had no idea of the programme until I reached there. No surprise it was just another typical Nepali style programme. Starting with ‘aasan grahan’ to chief guest and a cliche welcome speech by the organizer. Hundreds of school children, members of different dollar swallowing organizations had gathered to clean Bagmati. Obvious, the programme had two parts, formal and informal. The formal part started with national anthem and welcome speech. Good thing they felicitated Hutaram Vaidya. He has long contribution to Bagmati. Then after tools, bamboo sticks were distributed to the volunteers. All of them were working in a group almost in the same place. Few of them did not hesitate to dip them inside the water facing camera. Everybody looked excited for around ten minutes. Suddenly the mass started to dissapear.

Bottom line, hundreds of people gathered in a place, play national amthem, felicitated someone, take out some garbage from the river and throw in the bank and say this is what we do to clean Bagmati. Hats off.