Akthoooo!

I was sitting in the auto of an Indian man who had an incessant need to spit every five minutes for no reason at all. 

And I say incessant because this man was not one of those gutka spitting people. He was just one of those who kept spitting a thick, wet, dollop of mucus laced with phlegm on the road as his pastime. 

In my half an hour of the journey he did this vomit-inducing process 24 times. 24-bloody-times. Yeah, I had no option but to count, it was so damn pathetic. 

But the saddening part is that his habit wasn’t unusual at all. In fact, if there is one thing that unites us Indians regardless of the caste or ethnicity is that we literally can spit anywhere at any point of time for absolutely no reason. 

You might even blame the illiteracy of this country or just say that these ‘spitters’ do what they do just because they don’t know any better. While some part of it may be true, but what will you say to those suit and tie wearing ‘educated’ people who eject their saliva without any hesitation anywhere on the road? 

One might even say it is because of the dust/ dirt that constantly gets inside the mouth. But if that is so then how come people from other countries don’t face the same issue? 

Be it a road, a station, cinema halls, a wall or even a historical monument, us Indians tend to leave our gooey crimson red mark every damn where. 

We might be the only country that has a ‘No spitting’ sign every damn where. Isn’t that basic etiquette?    

I mean, if we as a country could combine the entire drool that the people of India extracted every year and would’ve gotten a way to recycle it, we would never face any water shortage. 

There is a reason why us Indians are considered to be unhygienic by people around the globe and seeing seeing habits like these, I have no way to counter it.