CHENNAI: Few things are as off-putting as being woken up by a shrill whistle. For the city residents, this whistle came from the garbage-collection vehicles visiting households in mornings.
But a 22-year-old youth is determined to save the residents from this ‘rude awakening’. “To have been woken up by the whistle was annoying to me as well,” said Sachin Sundar, a music producer, who has composed a tune named ‘garbage anthem’ for the city’s waste-collection vehicles to play in the mornings.
“When composing the tune, I kept reminding myself that it will be played every day and that it will be easy for the residents to get tired of it quickly,” he said adding: “The whistle, over the years, had become a part of the waste-collection process, and I didn’t want to do away with it completely. So, I incorporated it into the music in a way that isn’t jarring.”
It was his father, M Sundar, a Corporation Sanitary Officer in Ambattur zone, who put Sachin in touch with the corporation authorities when he heard that senior officials were planning to get a jingle composed. Soon, Sachin composed the tune, wrote the lyrics, and also sang the minute-long song, which underlines the need to keep the city streets clean and reminds residents to do source-level segregation of waste.
“We agreed to keep the words as simple as possible, easy to understand- almost like a nursery rhyme. I finished composing the tune within 24 hours of discussing it with corporation officials. It was immediately approved, barring a small change,” Sachin said, adding that the song has already started being played in some areas.