Sitting open-mouthed, four interlinked bins make a neat row, their backsides nearly brushing against the compound wall of the Mounted Police campus. The Municipal Magistrate Courts (popularly called Egmore Court Complex) is next-door neighbour to the Mounted Police, and the complex’s red heritage structure looms in the backdrop, if you take a transverse view of the bins and their precincts. 

In this environment of order, the four interlinked bins sit as a tandem unit in an attitude of discipline by the side of Adithanar Salai in Pudupet, Egmore. To a motorhead, they might come across as being as neatly placed as cylinders in an inline-four engine. But these “cylinders” are not firing. And it is not their fault.

One of the four bins, one that seeks wet waste, its staple diet placed next to it. The image was taken on October 8, 2025. Photos: Prince Frederick   
| Photo Credit:
PRINCE FREDERICK

The bins look sparkling clean, are noticeably of recent deployment and visibly starved of garbage. This section of the road finds itself reluctantly hosting tempo travellers and other big-sized vehicles, and there is a likelihood of a humungous vehicle blocking the bins’ view, but that would make little difference. The public is unlikely to miss them, as evidenced by where they prefer to dump the waste. There is plenty of garbage, dry and wet around the bins not in them. Much of the garbage lies tantalisingly close to their expectant mouths. 

The four bins announce their gastronomic preference: two salivate over dry waste and the other two over biodegradable, wet garbage. But the public is bent on starving these bins.

(‘Unclicked’ visually presents a civic resource or tool that is stubbornly ignored, underutilised or misused)