Trash disposal in our building is easy: we bag up our garbage and chuck it into the Dunkin’ Donuts’ dumpster whenever we like. We’re permitted to do this as residents of this building. It’s quite a boon.

Everyone else has to remember on which day to put the trash out on the sidewalk, after having separated organic waste from inorganic and having placed the different varieties in their colour-coded plastic receptacles. In the way of chores, it’s really very minor. Yet not having to do it feels like a tiny luxury. There should be a name for such pleasures. Something weighty and Germanic, like ‘Schadenfreude’, but meaning quite the opposite. ‘Geblissendheit’, perhaps: the bliss that comes from being spared minor inconveniences.

Anyway. Back to trash-talk. The aforementioned dumpster is a royal blue six-foot container. It is 10 yards from my kitchen window, on the other side of a chain-link fence. Every morning between 8 and 8:30, a garbage truck of matching colour comes grunting and panting up the short slope of the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. The truck looks vaguely like a monstrous beetle, with antennae on either side of its head. It positions itself with perfect precision in order to swing the antennae forward to engage with slots on the sides of the dumpster. Then with a slight creak, it swings the whole dumpster up high over its own head. The dumpster’s lid swings open and, with a couple of thumps, its contents are transferred to the belly of the truck.

Mission accomplished, the truck reverses all its moves. In less than one minute it’s on its way once more. I have often watched this performance and feel weirdly enriched by it. As in: Ain’t technology Wunnderful? Because sometimes it really is. Anyway. The point of all this is that I am painting in my studio this morning and had requested Bins to dispose of our weekly bag of trash. It just happens to be the day when other residents must put out their trash too. When he doesn’t come back at once, I am not surprised. He often goes out on long rambling walks.

Eventually, I hear my front door open and shut. Then footsteps and the zwip!zwip! whine of a nylon backpack being removed by someone wearing a nylon wind-cheater. Then size-11 shoes being removed and set down carefully. Hmm, I thought. That’s odd. He normally drops them with loud thumps. Then... silence. “Bins?” I say, uncertainly. “Is that you?”

Just then I see him tiptoeing past my studio door. He’s carrying the backpack in a funny way and miming “Shhh!” in my direction. I can hear an unfamiliar sound. A soft musical chittering. Bins brings the bag over and opens it. I see a small furry face with the distinctive black streak across the eyes. A baby raccoon. Oh NOOO! I mime. “I found him looking for garbage,” whispers Bins. “He’s hungry! We have to feed him.” NO!NO!NO! I mime. “Yes! Yes! Yes,” says Bins. “Gimme cookie,” trills the Raccoon.

( Manjula Padmanabhan , author and artist, writes about her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, in this weekly column )

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