A chat with Rodney, our local ragpicker

I meet him almost every Monday during my routine walk with my companion Rio, my dog. I guess he must be in his 70s. Silver haired with a ruddy complexion, sporting a high visibility jacket, I see him picking litter with his trash grabber and carefully putting it in bags. He greets everyone who passes by, a smile plastered on his face, untouched by the Monday morning blues. There is something avuncular about him. He is close to my dad’s age. In a fraction of a second I imagine my dad picking trash from the streets in India, an image I still don’t find pleasing, though my perception has completely changed after moving to this country, I admire how people respect each and every profession and no job is considered menial. The man in the high viz jacket intrigues me, and the journalist in me gets curious as a cat.

I talk, he opens up. I learn that Rodney aka Rod had worked in hotel industry in the maintenance department rising to the post of regional director of Engineering. He traveled all over the world helping a major hotel chain setting up hotels. He also worked in the power industry installing gas powered generators in various establishments.

Post retirement, he lived a quiet life, whiling his time fishing. “When the first lockdown started, during my walks i would hurt to see a lot of trash strewn all over the place. It irked me. So when a flyer came through the door with an article on Adopt a street, a volunteer organisation backed by the council, I thought this was my chance to give something back to the community. Last I heard there were close to do 500 volunteers in the borough doing the same job as I do, “he says.

So now come Monday and I am up and about with my trash grabber and bags doing rounds. It keeps me fit, and the neighbourhood spruced up.

Showing me a ball that he just found in the park, he says, these days I find very little litter on the roads and parks, I find that quite satisfying, Rodney tells me.

I want to linger on, talk to him some more but my dog on the leash was getting impatient and Rodney had a job to do, so I say goodbye to him. But all the way back home, I felt his positive energy transmitted to me. It put me in a good mood.