The widespread habit of spitting in public places without a care for those around, remains
India shining, a poster on the wall of a government office proclaims. “From all the spit that has glazed our beloved motherland?” I wonder. We consider it our birthright to spit as and where we please.
Virtually all public places in India, especially walls and staircase landings, are a testimony to this obsession. This national habit makes me recoil in horror. There is hardly anything one can do, other than scurry away as fast as possible, in those precious two seconds, when the spitter is gathering supplies from the depths of his soul and is ready to slather the world in all its slimy ugliness.
Whenever I step out of my house, I keep my fingers crossed that I don’t encounter the spitting specimen. But it’s as wishful as my hope to travel to outer space or win a billion-dollar lottery one day. The more wary I get, the more spitters I witness. It seems that they do it on purpose. They seek me out and spit just when I cross them.
I look away from one, only to witness someone else indulging in the act. No escape! “Keep calm! Glue your eyes to the ground,” I tell myself. It’s no better this way as I try to navigate through a veritable spit-mine. The road is peppered with blobs of the same kind of stuff albeit in different colours, shapes and vintage. Ugh!
God forbid if you are a pedestrian or riding a two-wheeler and happen to get in the trajectory of a liquid missile from a bus passenger. As with hierarchies in general, it’s better to be high in the hierarchy of vehicles, in order to avoid becoming a victim.
How do people generate such copious amounts of spit? The answer lies partly in the incessant chewing of paan, gutkha and supari. This chewing gets addictive as gutkha or supari are invariably laced with tobacco. A household help told me the reason she got into the habit. She had to get up early in the morning to reach her workplaces. With no time to have her own breakfast, she used to suppress hunger by chewing supari. In no time, she got addicted to it.
We are mistaken if we assume that only the members of the economically poorer strata of society is afflicted with this habit. The sight of car passengers rolling down their automatic windows to get rid of their possessions isn’t uncommon.
While taking a morning walk in my own apartment complex, I meet a well-to-do senior citizen on a regular basis. I turn a corner and spot him getting rid of his spittle right along the walking path, and being the least apologetic about it. “And there goes my magical morning!” I mourn. I definitely can’t preach to him so give him the most dignified disgusting look and hope he gets the point. The next day at my walk, I expect him to have learnt the lesson. Sadly, he is still as merry a spitter as ever.
If a fine of a rupee were imposed every time a person spits in a public space, it would fill the coffers of our government. Or if spitting was an Olympic sport, we would have swept the dais, winning all medals in all possible categories.
But alas, spitting doesn’t do any such wonders to us, other than spreading unhygienic conditions and disease, and making us look like an uncouth country.
If we don’t ditch the habit, we will probably soon earn the slogan of ‘India spitting’, much on the lines of the erstwhile slogan of ‘India Shining’!
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